Full text of "Uneasy money"

See other formats

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project
to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the
publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.

We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web

at http : //books . google . com/|

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

■'fiKARtS*

Diglized

by Google

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

UNEASY MONEY

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

/•OIC

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Fa.?

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

"It was their strenuousness that had given Lady Wetherby
that battered feeling."

<^lV^\ [Pagi 180.)

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

UNEASY MONEY

PELHAM GRENVILLE JTODEHOUSE

AUTHOR OF "mMmnHQKMW".

TMXJ&TRATED BT

CLARENCE p. underwood

I>. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK 1916

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

COPTHHJHT, 1016, BT

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
CoPTBMHT, 1915, 1910, bt Thb Cubtb Publishing Compact

Printed in the United States of America

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

To
My Wife,
Bless Her

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

-^ OFTOF
WWF.W. HjHOBBS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"It was their strenuousness that had given Lady

Wetherby that battered feeling" . . Frontispiece

faoimo rAoa

"He faced them . . . instructing heaven to bless his

benefactor" 6

"We had got as far as this when Eustace . . . sud-
denly sprang upon his back" S6

"Along came Bill at his customary high rate of

speed" 86

"He eyed the seething frame with interest but with-
out apparent panic" 126

'"Removed himself to the sink and began to hurl

eggs at the scullery maid' " 164

'"Why didn't you tell me!' she said. 'Your socks

are in an awful state, you poor boy !'"... 296

" 'I came after you, Bill' " . < 822

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

UNEASY MONEY

ON a day in June, at the hour when London mores
abroad in quest of lunch, a young man stood at
the entrance of the Bandolero Restaurant looking
earnestly up Shaftesbury Avenue: a large young man
in excellent condition, with a pleasant, good-humored,
brown, clean-cut face. He paid no attention to the
stream of humanity that flowed past him. His mouth
was set and his eyes wore a serious, almost a wistful
expression. He was frowning slightly. One would
have said that here was a man with a secret sorrow.

William Fitz William Delamere Chalmers, Lord Daw-
lish, had no secret sorrow. All that he was think-
ing of at that moment was the best method of laying
a golf ball dead in front of the Palace Theater. It
was his habit to pass the time in mental golf when
Claire Fenwick was late in keeping her appointments
with him. On one occasion she had kept him waiting
so long that he had been able to do nine holes, starting
at the Savoy Grill and finishing up near Hammersmith.
His was a simple mind, able to amuse itself with simple
things.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Some men in the circumstances in which Lord Daw-
lish found himself would have fidgeted and looked at
their watches ; some would have prowled up and down ;
others might have sought solace at the excellent bar
which the management of the Bandolero maintains for
just such emergencies. Lord Dawlish preferred men-
tal golf.

As he stood there, gazing into the middle distance,
an individual of disheveled aspect sidled up, a vagrant
of almost the maximum seediness, from whose midriff
there protruded a trayful of a strange welter of collar
studs, shoe laces, rubber rings, buttonhooks and dying
roosters. For some minutes he had been eying his lord-
ship appraisingly from the edge of the curb, and now,
secure in the fact that there seemed to be no policeman
in the immediate vicinity, he anchored himself in front
of him and observed that he had a wife and four chil-
dren at home, all starving.

This sort of thing was always happening to Lord
Dawlish. There was something about him, some at-
mosphere of unaffected kindliness, that invited it. To*
tal strangers who had made imprudent marriages with-
out asking his advice were forever stopping him in the
street and expecting him to finance the ventures. They
did it generally with a touch of reproach in their voices,
as if they felt a little wounded that he had not done
something about it before.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

In these days when everything, from the shape of a
man's hat to his method of dealing with asparagus, is
supposed to be an index to character, it is possible to
form some estimate of Lord Dawlish from the fact that
his vigil in front of the Bandolero had been expensive,
even before the advent of the benedict with the studs
and laces. In London, as in New York, there are spots
where it is unsafe for a man of yielding disposition to
stand still, and the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and
Piccadilly Circus is one of them. Scrubby, impecuni-
ous men drift to and fro there, waiting for the gods to
provide something easy; and the prudent man, con-
scious of the possession of loose change, whizzes
through the danger zone at his best speed, "like one
* that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread,
and having once turned round walks on, and turns no
more his head, because he knows a frightful fiend doth
close behind him tread." In the seven minutes he had
been waiting two frightful fiends closed in on Lord
Dawlish, requesting loans .of five shillings till Wednes-
day week and Saturday week respectively, and he had
parted with the money without a murmur.

A further clew to his character is supplied by the
fact that both these needy persons seemed to know
him intimately and that each called him Bill. All Lord
Dawlish's friends called him Bill, and he had a catholic
list of them, ranging from men whose names were in

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Debrctt to men whose names were on the notice boards
of obscure clubs in connection with the non-payment
of dues. He was the sort of man one instinctively calls
BilL

The anti-race-suicide enthusiast with the rubber
rings did not call Lord Dawlish Bill, but otherwise his
manner was intimate. His lordship's gaze being a little
slow in returning from the middle distance — for it was
not a matter to be decided carelessly and without
thought, this problem of carrying the length of Shaftes-
bury Avenue with a single brassy shot — he repeated the
gossip from the home. Lord Dawlish regarded him
thoughtfully.

"It could be done," he said, "but you'd want a bit
of pull on it. Fm sorry ; I didn't catch what you said."

The other obliged with his remark for the third time,
with increased pathos, for constant repetition was mak-
ing him almost believe it himself.

"Four starving children?"

"Four, gov'nor, so help me !"

"I suppose you don't get much time for golf then,
what?" said Lord Dawlish sympathetically.

It was precisely three days, said the man, mourn-
fully inflating a dying rooster, since his offspring had
tasted bread.

This did not touch Lord Dawlish deeply. He was
not very fond of bread. But it seemed to be troubling

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

the poor fellow with the studs a great deal, so, realizing
that tastes differ and that there is no accounting for
them, he looked at him commiseratingly.

"Of course if they like bread — that makes it rather
rotten, doesn't it? What are you going to do about
it?"

The man permitted the dying rooster to die noisily.

"Buy a dying rooster, gov'nor," he advised. "Causes
great fun and laughter."

Lord Dawlish eyed the strange fowl without en-
thusiasm.

"No," he said with a slight shudder.

"Buy a rubber ring, gov'nor. Always useful about
the little home."

"I shouldn't know what to do with it."

"Buy a nice collar stud."

"I've got a nice collar stud."

There was a pause. The situation had the appear-
ance of being at a deadlock.

"PU tell you what," said Lord Dawlish with the air
of one who, having pondered, has been rewarded with
a great idea : "The fact is, I really don't want to buy
anything. You seem by bad luck to be stocked up with
just the sort of things I wouldn't be seen dead in a
ditch with. I can't stand rubber rings — never could.
Fm not really keen on buttonhooks. And I don't want
to hurt your feelings, but I think that squeaking bird

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

of yours is about the beastliest thing I ever met. So
suppose I give you a shilling and call it square, what?"

"Gawd Wess yer, gov*nor !"

"Not at all. You'll be able to get those children of
yours some bread — I expect you can get a lot of bread
for a shilling. Do they really like it? Rum kids P*

And having concluded this delicate financial deal Lord
Dawlish turned, it being his intention to inspect the
fountain in Piccadilly Circus and estimate whether a
supposititious hole beneath it could be reached with a
single putt, or whether, as he suspected, a preliminary
use of the iron would be necessary. The movement
brought him face to face with a tall girl in white.

During the business talk which had just come to an
end this girl had been making her way up the side
street which forms a short cut between Coventry Street
and the Bandolero, and several admirers of feminine
beauty who happened to be using the same route had
almost dislocated their necks looking after her. She
was a strikingly handsome girl. She was tall and wil-
lowy. Her eyes, shaded by her hat, were large and
gray. Her nose was small and straight, her mouth,
though somewhat hard, admirably shaped, and she car-
ried herself magnificently. One cannot blame the po-
liceman on duty in Leicester Square for remarking to
a cabman, as she passed, that he envied the Woke that
that was going to meet.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

"He faced them, . . . instructing heaven to bless his bene-
factor."

Digitized by VjOOQIC

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Bill Dawlish was this fortunate bloke, but, from the
look of him as he caught sight of her, one would have
said that he did not appreciate his luck. The fact of
the matter was that he had only just finished giving the
father of the family his shilling and he was afraid that
Claire had seen him doing it. For Claire, dear girl,
was apt to be unreasonable about these little generosi-
ties of his. He cast a furtive glance behind him in the
hope that the disseminator of expiring roosters had
vanished, but the man was still at his elbow. Worse,
he faced them, and in a hoarse but carrying voice he
was instructing heaven to bless his benefactor.

"Hello, Claire darling," said Lord Dawlish with a
sort of sheepish breeziness. "Here you are !"

Claire was looking after the stud merchant, as,
grasping his wealth, he scuttled up the avenue.

"Were you giving that man money, Bill?"

"Only a bob," his lordship hastened to say. "Rather
a sad case, don't you know. Squads of children at
home demanding bread. Didn't want much else ap-
parently, but were frightfully keen on bread."

"He has just gone into a public house."

"He may have gone to telephone or something,
what?"

"I wish," said Claire fretfully, leading the way down
the grillroom stairs, "that you wouldn't let all London
sponge on you like this. I keep telling you not to. I

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

should have thought that if anyone needed to keep what
little money he has got, it was you."

Certainly Lord Dawlish would have been more pru-
itent not to have parted with even eleven shillings, for
he was not a rich man. Indeed, with the single excep-
tion of the Earl of Wetherby, whose finances were so
irregular that he could not be said to possess an income
at all, he was the poorest man of his rank in the British
Isles.

It was in the days of the Regency that the Dawlish
coffers first began to show signs of cracking under the
strain, in the era of the then celebrated Beau Dawlish.
Judging from contemporary portraits of this gentle-
man, there would seem to be no reason why he should
have been given or should have assumed that prenomen.
But it is pretty generally recognized now that in the
good old days anybody with a hundred and ten suits of
clothes, a few pet pugilists, and a taste for high stakes
at piquet could call himself "Beau" and get away with
it. These qualifications Bill's ancestor had possessed
to a remarkable degree.

Nor were his successors backward in the spending
art. A breezy disregard for the preservation of the
pence was a family trait. Bill was at Cambridge when
his predecessor in the title, his Uncle Philip, was per-
forming the concluding exercises of the dissipation of
the Dawlish doubloons, a feat which he achieved so

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

neatly that when he died there was just enough cash
to pay the doctors, and no more. Bill found himself
the possessor of that most ironical thing, a moneyless
title. He was then twenty-three.

Until six months before, when he had become engaged
to Claire Fenwick, he had found nothing to quarrel
with in his lot. He was not the type to waste time in
Tain regrets. His tastes were simple. As long as he
could afford to belong to one or two golf clubs and have
something over for those small loans which, in certain
of the numerous circles in which he moved, were the in-
evitable concomitant of popularity, he was satisfied.
And this modest ambition had been realized for him by
a group of what- he was accustomed to refer to as
decent old bucks, who had installed him as secretary of
that aristocratic and exclusive club, Brown's in St.
James's Street, at an annual salary of four hundred
pounds. With that wealth, added to free lodging at
one of the best clubs in London, perfect health, a stead-
ily diminishing golf handicap and a host of friends in
every walk of life, Bill had felt that it would be absurd
not to be happy and contented.

But Claire had made a difference. There was no
question of that. In the first place, she resolutely de-
clined to marry him on four hundred pounds a year.
She scoffed at four hundred pounds a year. To hear
her talk, you would have supposed that she had been

Digitized' by LiOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

brought up from the cradle to look on four hundred
pounds a year as small change to be disposed of in tips
and cabfares. That in itself would have been enough
to sow doubts in Bill's mind as to whether he had really
got all the money that a reasonable man needed; and
Claire saw to it that these doubts sprouted, by con-
fining her conversation on the occasions of their meet-
ing almost entirely to the great theme of Money, with
its minor subdivisions of How to Get It, Why Don't
You Get It? and I'm Sick and Tired of Not Having
It

She developed this theme today, not only on the stairs
leading to the grillroom, but even after they had seated
themselves at their table. It was a relief to Bill when
the arrival of the waiter with food caused a break in
the conversation and enabled him adroitly to change the
subject.

"What have you been doing this morning?" he asked.

"I went to see Maginnis at the theater."

"Oh!"

"I had a wire from him asking me to call. They want
me to take up Claudia Winslow's part in the number
one company."

"That's good."

"Why?"

"Well— er— what I mean— well; isn't it? What I
mean is, leading part, and so forth."

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"In a touring company?"

"Yes, I see what you mean," said Lord Dawlish, who
didn't at alL He thought rather highly of the number
one companies that hailed from the theater of which
Mr. Maginnis was proprietor.

"And anyhow, I ought to have had the part in the
first place instead of when the tour's half over. Thejr
are at Southampton this week. He wants me to join
them there and go on to Portsmouth with them." *

"You'll like Portsmouth."

"Why?"

"Well — er — good links quite near."

"You know I don't play golf."

"Nor do you. I was forgetting. Still, it's quite a
jolly place."

"It's a horrible place. I loathe it. I've half a mind
not to go."

"Oh, I don't know."

"What do you mean?"

Lord Dawlish was feeling a little sorry for himself.
Whatever he said seemed to be the wrong thing. This
evidently was one of the days on which Claire was not
so sweet-tempered as on some other days. It crossed
his mind that of late these irritable moods of hers had
grown more frequent. It was not her fault, poor girl,
he told himself. She had rather a rotten time.

It was always Lord Dawlish's habit on these occa*

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

sions to make this excuse for Claire. It was such a
satisfactory excuse. It covered everything. But, as a
matter of fact, the rather rotten time which she was
having was not such a very rotten one. Reducing it to
its simplest terms, and forgetting for the moment that
she was an extraordinarily beautiful girl — which his
lordship found it impossible to do — all that it amounted
to was that, her mother having but a small income, and
existence in the West Kensington flat being conse-
quently a trifle dull for one with a taste for the lux-
uries of life, Claire had gone on the stage. By birth
she belonged to a class of which the female members
are seldom called upon to earn money at all, and that
was one count of her grievance against Fate. Another
was that she had not done as well on the stage as she
had expected to do. When she became engaged to Bill
she had reached a point where she could obtain without
difficulty good parts in the road companies of London
successes, but beyond that, it seemed, it was impossible
for her to soar. It was not, perhaps, a very exhilarat-
ing life, but, except to the eyes of love, there was noth-
ing tragic about it. It was the cumulative effect of
having a mother in reduced circumstances and grum-
bling about it, of being compelled to work and grum-
bling about that, and of achieving in her work only a
semi-success and grumbling about that also, that —
backed by her looks — enabled Claire to give quite a

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

number of people, and Bill Dawliah in particular, the
impression that she was a modern martyr, only sus-
tained by her indomitable courage.

So Bill, being requested in a peevish voice to explain
what he meant by saying, "Oh, I don't know," condoned
the peevishness. He then bent his mind to the task of
trying to ascertain what he had meant.

"Well," he said, "what I mean is, if you don't show
up won't it be rather a jar for old friend Maginnis?
Won't he be apt to foam at the mouth a bit and stop
giving you parts in his companies?"

"Fm sick of trying to please Maginnis. What's the
good? He never gives me a chance in London. I'm
sick of being always on the road. Fm sick of every-
thing."

"It's the heat," said Lord Dawliah most injudi-
ciously.

"It isn't the heat. It's you!"

"Me?"

His lordship choked. This unexpected frontal attack
had taken him by surprise and caused him to swallow a
chipped potato with less than his usual dexterity. He
sipped water, and, when he could speak, spoke plain-
tively:

"What have I done?"

"It's what you've not done. Why can't you exert
yourself and make some money?"

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Lord DawUsh groaned a silent groan. By a devious
route, but with unfailing precision, they had come hom-
ing back to the same old subject.

"We have been engaged for six months, and there
seems about as much chance of our ever getting married
as of — I can't think of anything unlikely enough. We
shall go on like this till we're dead."

"But, my dear girl !"

"I wish you wouldn't talk to me as if you were my
grandfather. What were you going to say?"

"Only that we can get married this afternoon, if
you'll say the word."

'Oh, don't let us go into all that again! I'm not
going to marry on four hundred a year and spend the
rest of my life in a poky little flat on the edge of Lon-
don. Why can't you make more money?"

"I did have a dash at it, you know. I waylaid old
Bodger — Colonel Bodger, on the committee of the club,
you know — and suggested over a whisky-and-soda that
the management of Brown's would be behaving like
sportsmen if they bumped my salary up a bit, and the
old boy nearly strangled himself trying to suck down
Scotch and laugh at the same time. I give you my word
he nearly expired on the smoking-room floor. When
he came to he said that he wished I wouldn't spring my
good things on him so suddenly, as he had a weak heart.
He said they were only paying me my present salary

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

because they liked me so much. You know, it was decent
of the old boy to say that."

"What is the good of being liked by the men in your
club if you won't make any use of it?"

"How do you mean?"

"There are endless things you could do. You could
have got Mr. Breitstein elected at Brown's if you had
liked. They wouldn't have dreamed of blackballing
anyone proposed by a popular man like you, and Mr.
Breitstein asked you personally to use your influence —
you told me so."

"But, my dear girl — I mean, my darling — Breitstein !
He's the limit ! He's the worst bounder in London."

"He's also one of the richest men in London. He
would have done anything for you. And you let him
go ! You insulted him P'

"Insulted him?"

"Didn't you send him an admission ticket to the
Zoo?"

"Oh, well, yes, I did do that. He thanked me and
went the following Sunday. Amazing how these rich
Johnnies love getting something for nothing. There
was that old American I met down at Marvis Bay last

year "

"You threw away a wonderful chance of making all
sorts of money. Why, a single tip from Mr. Breitstein
would have made your fortune."

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"But, Claire, you know, there are some things —
what I mean is, if they like me at Brown's it's awfully
decent of them and all that, but I couldn't take advan-
tage of it to plant a fellow like Breitstein on them. It
wouldn't be playing the game."

"Oh, nonsense!"

Lord Dawlish looked unhappy, but said nothing.
This matter of Mr. Breitstein had been touched upon
by Claire in previous conversations, and it was a sub-
ject for which he had little liking. Experience had
taught him that none of the arguments which seemed
so conclusive to him — to wit, that the financier had on
two occasions only just escaped imprisonment for
fraud, and, what was worse, made a noise, when he drank
soup, like water running out of a bathtub — had the
least effect upon her. The only thing to do when Mr.
Breitstein came up in the course of chitchat over the
festive board was to stay quiet until he blew over.

But today Claire was waging war with Maxims, not
with squirrel guns. She was firing at random into the
brown of his shortcomings, and if she missed one she
was sure to hit another. And rashly he had himself
directed her attention to a misdemeanor only second
in importance to the Breitstein sin. He had reminded
her of Mr. Ira Nutcombe.

"That old American you met at Marvis Bay," said
Claire, her memory flitting back to the remark which

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

she had interrupted ; "well, there's another case. You
could easily have got him to do something for you."

"Claire, really!" said his goaded lordship protest-
ingly. "How on earth? I only met the man on the
links."

"But you were very nice to him. You told me your-
self that you spent hours helping him to get rid of his
slice, whatever that is."

"We happened to be the only two down there at the
time, so I was as civil as I could manage. If you're
marooned at a Cornish seaside resort out of the season
with a man, you can't spend your time dodging him.
And this man had a slice that fascinated me. I felt
at the time that it was my mission in life to cure him,
so I had a dash at it. But I don't see how on the
strength of that I could expect the old boy to adopt me.
He probably forgot my existence after I had left."

"You said you met him in London a month or two
afterward, and he hadn't forgotten you."

"Well, yes, that's true. He was walking up the Hay-
market and I was walking down. I caught his eye, and
he nodded and passed on. I don't see how I could con-
strue that into an invitation to go and sit on his lap
and help myself out of his pockets."

"You couldn't expect him to go out of his way to
help you; but, probably, if you had gone to him he
would have dom something."

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"You haven't the pleasure of Mr. Ira Nutcombe's
acquaintance, Claire, or you wouldn't talk like that.
He wasn't the sort of man you could get things out of.
He didn't even tip the caddie. Besides, can't you see
what I mean? I couldn't trade on a chance acquain-
tance of the golf links to "

"That is just what I complain of in you. You're
too diffident."

"It isn't diffidence exactly. Talking of old Nut-
combe, I was speaking to Gates again the other night.
He was telling me about America. There's a lot of
money to be made over there, you know, and the com-
mittee owes me a vacation. They would give me a few
weeks off any time I liked.

"What do you say? Shall I pop over and have a
look round? I might happen just to drop into some-
thing. Gates was telling me about fellows he knew
who had dropped into things in New York."

"What's the good of putting yourself to all the
trouble and expense of going to America? You can
easily make all you want in London, if you will only try.
It isn't as if you had no chances. You have more
chances than almost any man in town. With your title
you could get all the directorships in the City that you
wanted."

"Well, the fact is, this business of taking director-
ships has never quite appealed to me, I don't know

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

anything about the game and I should probably run up
against some wildcat company. I can't say I like the
directorship wheeze much. It's the idea of knowing
that one's name would be being used as a bait. Every
time I saw it on a prospectus I should feel like a trout
fly."

Claire bit her lip.

"It's so exasperating?' she broke out. "When I
first told my friends that I was engaged to Lord Daw-
lish they were tremendously impressed. They took it
for granted that you must have lots of money. Now
I have to keep explaining to them that the reason we
don't get married is that we can't afford to. Fm al-
most as badly off as poor Polly Davis who was in the
Heavenly Waltz Company with me when she married
that man, Lord Wetherby. A man with a title has no
right not to have money. It makes the whole thing
farcical.

"If I were in your place I should have tried a hun-
dred things by now, but you always have some silly
objection. Why couldn't you, for instance, have taken
on the agency of that what-d'you-call-it car?"

"What I called it would have been nothing to
what the poor devils who bought it would have called
if

"You could have sold hundreds of them, and the
company would have given you any commission you

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

asked. You know just the sort of people they wanted
to get in touch with."

"But, darling, how could I? Planting Breitstein on
the club would have been nothing compared with sowing
these horrors about London. I couldn't go about the
place sticking my pals with a car which, I give you my
honest word, was stuck together with chewing gum and
tied up with string."

"Why not? It would be their fault if they bought a
car that wasn't any good. Why should you have to
worry once you had it sold?"

It was not Lord Dawlish's lucky afternoon. All
through lunch he had been saying the wrong thing, and
now he put the coping stone on his misdeeds. Of all
the ways in which he could have answered Claire's ques-
tion he chose the worst.

"Er — well," he said, "noblesse oblige, don't you know,
what?"

For a moment Claire did not speak. Then she looked
at her watch and got up.

"I must be going," she said coldly.

"But you haven't had your coffee yet."

"I don't w*nt any coffee."

"What's the matter, dear?"

"Nothing is the matter. I have to go home and pack.
I'm going to Southampton this afternoon."

She began to move toward the door. Lord Dawlish,

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

anxious to follow, was detained by the fact that he had
not jet paid the check. The production and settling of
this took time, and when finally he turned in search of
Claire she -was nowhere visible.

Bounding upstairs on the swift feet of love he reached
the street. She had gone.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

A GRAY sadness surged over Bill Dawlish. The
run hid itself behind a cloud, the sky took on a
L uc jc. and a chill wind blew through the world.
t* a.. I Shaftesbury Avenue with a jaundiced eye,

. •• ;\ii that he had never seen a beastlier or more
( /-.vasi/.g thoroughfare. Piccadilly, however, into
..Inch ho shortly dragged himself, was even worse. It
w-s full of men and women and other depressing things*

He pitied himself profoundly. It was a rotten world
to live in, this, where a fellow couldn't say, "Noblesse
oblige" without upsetting the universe. Why shouldn't

a fellow say, "Noblesse obligef" Why At this

juncture Lord Dawlish walked into a lamp-post.

The shock changed his mood. Gloom still obsessed
him, but blended now with remorse. He began to look
at the matter from Claire's viewpoint, and his pity
switched from himself to her. In the first place, the
poor girl had rather a rotten time. Could she be
blamed for wanting him to make money? No. Yet
whenever she made suggestions as to how the thing was
to be done he snubbed her by saying, "Noblesse oblige."
Naturally a refined and sensitive young girl objected
to having things like, "Noblesse oblige" said to her.

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Where was the sense in saying Noblesse oblige? Such a
damn silly thing to say! Only a perfect ass would
spend his time rushing about the place saying Noblesse
oblige to people.

"By Jove!" Lord Dawlish stopped in his stride.
He disentangled himself from a pedestrian who had
rammed him on the back. "I'll do it!"

He hailed a passing taxi and directed the driver to
make for the Pen and Ink Club.

The decision at which Bill had arrived with such
dramatic suddenness in the middle of Piccadilly was
the same at which some centuries earlier Columbus had
arrived in the privacy of his home.

"Damn it !" said Bill to himself in the cab. Til go to
America!" The exact words, probably, which Colum-
bus had used, talking the thing over with his wife.

Bill's knowledge of the great republic across the sea
was at this period of his life a little sketchy. He knew
that there had been unpleasantness between England
and the United States in seventeen-something and again
in eighteen-something, but that things had eventually
been straightened out by Miss Edna May and her fel-
low missionaries of The Belle of New York Company,
since which time there had been no more trouble. Of
American cocktails he had a fair working knowledge,
and he appreciated ragtime. But of the great Ameri-
can institutions — ice water, direct primaries, New Jer-

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

sey mosquitoes, the Woolworth Building, George M.
Cohan, chop suey, rubberneck wagons, bunts, Matty,
silver-tongued orators, Yellowstone Park, the Pennsyl-
vania Station, corn on the cob, and Eva Tanguay — he
was completely ignorant. And his natural ignorance
had been complicated by the contradictory reports of
the country which he had received from exiles of his
acquaintance resident in London. His friend Gates,
for instance, said that, except for a few scattered ham-
lets, America ceased at Forty-second Street, New York.
Another exile, on the other hand, thought little of New
York, but said that Constantinople, Michigan, was
God's footstool A third claimed that the country be-
gan only on the western side of the Rocky Mountains.
It was confusing for Bill

He was on his way now to see Gates. Gates was a
comparatively recent addition to his list of friends, a
New York newspaper man who had come to England a
few months before to act as his paper's London cor-
respondent. He was generally to be found at the Pen
and Ink Club, an institution affiliated with the New
York Players, of which he was a member.

Gates was in. He had just finished lunch.

"What's the trouble, Bill?^ he inquired, when he had
deposited his lordship in a corner of the reading room,
which he had selected because silence was compulsory
there, thus rendering it possible for two men to hear

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

each other speak. "What brings you charging in here
looking like the Soul's Awakening?"
"Fve had an idea, old man."

ashoot r

"Eh?"

"Proceed. Continue. Put it over."

"Oh! Well, you remember what you were saying
about America?"

"What was I saying about America?"

"The other day, don't you remember? What a lot
of money there was to be made there, ancTso forth."

"Well?"

"Tm going there."

"To America?"

"Yes."

"To make money?"

"Rather."

Grates nodded — sadly, it seemed to Bill. He was
rather a melancholy young man, with a long face not
unlike the face of a pessimistic horse.

"Gosh!" he said.

Bill felt a little damped. By no mental juggling
could he construe "Gosh!" into an expression of en-
thusiastic approbation.

"Don't you think I could make money there?" he
asked.

"At what?"

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Oh, anything."

"Yes, there's a demand for that, of course."

"Yon said there were a lot of things a fellow could
drop into."

"I was thinking of the open coal chutes." He looked
at Bill curiously. ''What's the idea?" he said. "I
could have understood it if you had told me that you
were going to New York for pleasure, instructing your
man Willoughby to see that the trunks were jolly well
packed and wiring to the skipper of your yacht to meet
you at Liverpool. But you seem to have sordid mo-
tives. You talk about making money. What do you
want with more money?"

"Why, I'm devilish hard up."

"Tenantry a bit slack about coming across with the
rent?" said Gates sympathetically.

Bill laughed.

"My dear chap, I don't know what on earth you're
talking about. How much money do you think I've
got? Four hundred pounds a year, and no prospect
of ever making more unless I sweat for it."

"What ! I always thought you were bloated."

"What gave you that idea?"

"You have a prosperous look. It's a funny thing
about England. I've known you four months, and I
know men who know you ; but Fve never heard a word
about your finances. In New York we all wear labels,

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

stating our incomes and prospects in clear lettering.
Well, if it's like that it's different, of course. There
certainly is more money to be made in America than
here. I don't quite see what you think you're going to
do when you get there, but that's up to you.

"There's no harm in giving the city the once over.
Anyway I can give you a letter or two that might help."

"That's awfully good of you."

"You won't mind my alluding to you as my friend
William Smith?"

"William Smith?"

"You can't travel under your own name if you are
really serious about getting a job. Mind you, if my
letters lead to anything it will probably be a situation
as an earnest bill clerk or an effervescent office boy,
for Rockefeller and Carnegie and that lot have swiped
all the soft jobs. But if you go over as Lord Dawlish
you won't even get that. Lords are popular socially
in America, but are not used to any great extent in the
office. If you try to break in under your right name
youll get the glad hand and be asked down to Tuxedo
and Huntington, and play a good deal of golf and
dance quite a lot, but you won't get a job. A gentle
smile will greet all your pleadings that you be allowed
to horn in and save the firm."

"I see."

"We may look on Smith as a necessity."

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Do you know, I'm not frightfully keen on the name
Smith. Wouldn't something else do?"

"Sure. We aim to please. How would Jones suit
you?"

"The trouble is, you know, that if I took a name I
wasn't used to I might forget it."

"If you've the sort of mind that would forget Jones
I doubt if ever you'll be a captain of industry."

"Why not Chalmers?"

"You think it easier to memorize than Jones?"

"It used to be my name, you see, before I got the
title."

"I see. All right. Chalmers then. When do you
think of starting?"

"Tomorrow."

"You aren't losing much time. By the way, as you're
going to New York you might as well use my apart-
ment."

"It's awfully good of you."

"Not a bit. You would be doing me a favor. I had
to leave at a moment's notice, and I want to know
what's been happening to the place. I left some Japa-
nese prints there, and my favorite nightmare is that
someone has broken in and sneaked them. Write down
the address — Forty-three East Twenty-seventh Street.
I'll mail you the key to Brown's tonight with those
letters."

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Bill walked up the Strand glowing with energy. He
made his way to Cockspur Street to buy his ticket for
New York. This done, he set out to Brown's to arrange
with the committee the details of his departure.

He reached Brown's at twenty minutes past two and
left it again at twenty-three minutes past ; for, directly
he entered, the hall porter had handed him a telephone
message. The telephone attendants at London clubs
are masters of suggestive brevity. The one in the
basement of Brown's had written on Bill's slip of paper
the words: "1 p. m. Will Lord Dawlish as soon as
possible call upon ?jfr. Gerald Nichols at his office."
To this was appended a message consisting of two
words : "Good news."

It was stimulating. The probability was that all
Jerry Nichols wanted to tell him was that he had re-
ceived stable information about some horse or had been
given a box for the Empire, but for all that it was
stimulating.

Bill looked at his watch. He could spare half an
hour. He set out at once for the offices of the eminent
law firm of Nichols, Nichols, Nichols and Nichols, of
which aggregation of Nicholses his friend Jerry was the
last and smallest.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

ON a westbound omnibus Claire Fenwick sat and
raged silently in the June sunshine. She was
furious. What right had Lord Dawlish to look down
his nose and murmur, "Noblesse oblige" when she asked
him a question, as if she had suggested that he should
commit some crime? It was the patronizing way he
had said it that infuriated her, as if he were a superior
being of some kind, governed by codes which she could
not be expected to understand. Everybody nowadays
did the sort of things she suggested, so what was the
good of looking shocked and saying, "Noblesse oblige?"

The omnibus rolled on. It passed through Picca-
dilly, full of opulent-looking people who could afford
taxis and private cars. It halted long enough at the
foot of Sloane Street to enable Claire to look down a
vista of desirable residences without a single five-roomed
flat among them. Then it turned up toward Kensing-
ton Gardens, when every revolution of the wheels took
it farther from civilization and nearer London's Har-
lem, those realms of outer darkness where the genteelly
poor live on top of one another in layers.

Claire hated West Kensington. She hated it with
the bitter hate of one who had read society novels, and

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

yearned for Grosvenor Square and butlers and a gen-
eral atmosphere of soft cushions and pink-shaded lights
and maids to do one's hair. She hated the cheap furni-
ture of the little parlor, the penetrating contralto of
the cook singing hymns in the kitchen, and the ubiqui-
tousness of her small brother, who seemed sometimes to
her excited imagination to pervade the flat like a species
of poison gas. He was only ten, and small for his age,
yet he appeared to have the power of being in two rooms
at the same time while making a nerve-racking noise in
another. After ten years of little Percy's acquaintance,
the only thing which Claire found herself able to detect
as a positive merit in him was the fact that he was not
twins.

It was Percy who greeted her today as she entered
the flat. He came pouring out of the parlor as if the
dam had burst.

"Hello, Claire! I say, Claire, there's a letter for
you. It came by the second post. I say, Claire, it's got
an American stamp on it. I want it for my collection.
Can I have it for my collection, Claire? I haven't got
one in my collection. Can I have it for my collection,
Claire? Claire, can I have it for my collection ?"

His sister regarded him broodingly. The heat of
the afternoon, the unexpected summons to work, and
the insufferable behavior of William, Lord Dawlish, had
combined to engender a mood in which this lad with his

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

open boyish face was even more repulsive to her than
usual. There were many times, and this was one of
them, when it struck Claire forcibly that King Herod
had had the right idea.

"For goodness9 sake, don't bellow like that!" she
said. "Of course you can have the stamp. I don't
want it. Where is the letter ?"

"Here it is, Claire. I say, Claire, how much do you
think a stamp like that's worth? It's got 'two cents*
written on it. I wonder if it's rare, Claire."

Claire took the envelope from him. He had been
holding it in his hand for safety, and it was damp and
seemed to simmer with a gentle glow. A Bertillon ex-
pert would have been interested in the perfect repro-
duction of the lines of Percy's little thumb in the left-
hand corner.

She examined it with a pained loathing. For years
the question of the infrequency and inadequacy of his
ablutions had been an issue bitterly fought out between
her brother and herself, in a series on her side of verbal
notes couched in terms of unfaltering firmness and hold-
ing him to a strict accountability; on his, of replies
sedulously avoiding the main issue. It was too hot
today to reopen the subject, so holding the envelope
delicately she extracted the letter and handed back the
shell Percy vanished into the dining-room with a shat-
tering squeal, of pleasure.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

A voice spoke from behind a half-opened door:

"Is that you, Claire?"

"Yes, mother; I've come back to pack. They want
me to go to Southampton tonight to take up Claudia
Winslow's part."

A sigh greeted this remark. This did not mean that
it had hurt or displeased Mrs. Fenwick. She sighed
because she always sighed when spoken to. It was an
unconscious and extremely irritating habit of hers.

"What train are you catching?"

'The three-fifteen."

"You will have to hurry."

"Pm going to hurry," said Claire, clenching her fists
as two simultaneous bursts of song, in different keys
and varying tempos, proceeded from the dining-room
and kitchen. A girl has to be in a sunnier mood than
she was to bear up without wincing under the infliction
of a duet consisting of "Rock of Ages" and "Waiting
for the Robert E. Lee." Assuredly Claire proposed to
hurry. She meant to get her packing done in record
time and escape from this place. She went into her
bedroom and began to throw things untidily into her
trunk. She had put the letter in her pocket against a
more favorable time for perusal. A glance had told her
that it was from her friend Polly, Countess of Weth-
erby, that Polly Davis of whom she had spoken to Lord
Dawlish. Polly Davis, now married for better or for

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

worse to that curious invertebrate person, Algie Weth-
erby, was the only real friend Claire had made on the
stage. A sort of shivering gentility had kept her aloof
from the rest of her fellow workers, but it took more
than a shivering gentility to stave off Polly. Besides,
Polly was an American, and even when the American
girl is vulgar she is so with a difference. Polly had
never jarred upon Claire. She was a friendly, kindly,
good-hearted creature, with the face and figure of a
Greek goddess and the mental outlook of Broadway and
Forty-second Street, who bad taken a violent fancy to
Claire which no haughtiness could have chilled.

Claire had passed through the various stages of inti-
macy with her, until on the occasion of Polly's marriage
she had acted as her bridesmaid*

It was a long letter, too long to be read until she was
at leisure, and written in a straggling hand that made
reading difficult. She was mildly surprised that Polly
should have written her, for she had been back in Amer-
ica a year or more now and this was her first letter.
Polly had a warm heart and did not forget her friends,
but she was not a good correspondent.

The need of getting her things ready at once drove
the letter from Claire's mind. She was in the train on
her way to Southampton before she remembered its
existence.

It was dated from New York.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy 'Money

My mae old Claim: Is this really my first letter to
yon? Isn't that awful! Gee! A lot's happened since I
saw yon last I mnst tell yon first about my hit. Some hit!
Claire, old girl, I own New York. I daren't tell yon what
my salary is. Yon'd faint.

I'm doing barefoot dancing. Yon know the sort of stuff.
I started it in vaudeville, and went so big that my agent
shifted me to the restaurants, and they have to call out
the police reserves to handle the crowds. You can't get
a table at Riegelheimer's, which is my pitch, unless you
slip the headwaiter your whole roll and promise to mail
him your clothes when you get home. I dance during
supper with nothing on my feet and not much anywhere
else, and it takes three vans to carry my salary to the
bank.

Of course it's the title that does it— "Lady Pauline
Wetherby !" Algie says it oughtn't to be that, because I'm
not the daughter of a duke, but I should worry about that
It looks good, and that's all that matters. I should be in
the merry-merry still at twenty-five per if it wasn't for the
good old monaker. You can't get away from the title. I
was born in Carbondale, Illinois, but that doesn't matter —
I'm an English countess, doing barefoot dancing to work
off the mortgage on the ancestral castle (press stuff: it
went big), and they eat me. Take it from me, Claire, I'm
a riot

Well, that's that What I am really writing about is to
tell yon that you have got to come over here. I've taken a
house at Brookport, on Long Island, for the summer. Yon
can stay with me till the fall, and then I can easily get yon
a good job in New York. I have some pull these days,

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

believe me. Not that you'll need my help. The managers
have only got to see you and they'll all want yon. I showed
one of them that photograph yon gave me, and he went np
in the air. They pay twice as big salaries over here, yon
know, as in England, so come by the next boat.

Claire, darling, yon must come. I'm wretched. Algie
has got my goat the worst way. If you don't know what
that means it means that he's been behaving like a perfect
pig. I sometimes used to read pieces in the paper and
novels panning the English husband and, believe me, Algie
is that sort of husband and then some. I hardly know
where to begin. Well, it was this way. Directly I made
my hit my press agent, a real bright man named Sherriff,
got busy, of course. Interviews, you know, and Advice to
Young Girls in the evening papers, and How I Preserve
My Beauty, and all that sort of thing. Well, one thing he
made me do was to buy a snake and a monkey. Roscoe
Sherriff has a bug about animals as aids to publicity stuff.
He says an animal story is the thing he does best So I
bought them.

Algie kicked from the first I ought to tell you that
since we left England he has taken up painting footling
little pictures and has got the artistic temperament badly.
All his life he's been starting some new fool thing. When
I first-met him he prided himself on having the finest col-
lection of photographs of race horses in England. Then
he got a craze for model engines. After that he used to
work the piano player till I nearly went dippy. And now
it's pictures.

I don't mind his painting. It gives him something to
do and keeps him out of mischief. He has a studio down

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

"We had got as far as this when Eustace . • • suddenly
sprang upon his back."

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

in Washington Square, and is perfectly nappy messing
about there all day.

Everything would be fine if he didn't think it necessary
to tack on the artistic temperament to his painting. He's
developed the idea that he has nerves, and everything upsets
them.

Things came to a head this morning at breakfast. Clar-
ence, my snake, has the cutest way of climbing up the leg
of the table and looking at you pleadingly in the hope that
you will give him soft-boiled egg, which he adores. He
did it this morning, and no sooner had his head appeared
above the table than Algie, with a kind of sharp wail,
struck him a violent blow on the nose with a teaspoon.
Then he turned to me, very pale, and said: "Pauline, this
must end! The time has come to speak up. A nervous,
highly strung man like myself should not and must not be
called upon to live in a house where he is constantly meet-
ing snakes and monkeys without warning. Choose between
me and "

We had got as far as this when Eustace, the monkey,
who I didn't know was in the room at all, suddenly sprang
upon his back. He is very fond of Algie.

Would you believe it? Algie walked straight out of the
house, still holding the teaspoon, and has not returned.
Later in the day he called me up on the phone and said
that, though he realised that a man's place was the home,
he declined to cross the threshold again until I had got
rid of Eustace and Clarence. I tried to reason with him.
I told him that he ought to think himself lucky it wasn't
anything worse than a monkey and a snake, for the last
person Roscoe Sherriff handled, an emotional actress named

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Devenish, had to keep a young puma. But he wouldn't
listen, and the end of it was that he rang off and I have
not seen or heard of him since.

I am broken-hearted. I won't give in, but I am having
an awful time. So, dearest Claire, do come over and help
me. If you could possibly sail by the Atlantic, leaving
Southampton on the twenty-fourth of this month, you would
meet a friend of mine whom I think you would like. His
name is Dudley Pickering, and he made a fortune in auto-
mobiles. I expect you have heard of the Pickering auto-
mobiles?

Darling Claire, do come, or I know I shall weaken and
yield to Algie's outrageous demands; for, though I would
like to hit him with a brick, I love him dearly.
Your affectionate

Polly Wbthebbt.

Claire sank back against the cushioned seat and her
eyes filled with tears of disappointment. Of all the
things which would have chimed in with her discon-
tented mood at that moment a sudden flight to America
was the most alluring. Only one consideration held her
back — she had not the money for her fare.

Polly might have thought of that, she reflected bit-
terly. She took the letter up again and saw that on the
last page there was a postscript:

P. S. I don't know how you are fixed for money, old
girl, but if things are the same with you as in the old days
you can't be rolling. So I have paid for a passage for

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

you with the liner people this side, and they have cabled
their English office, so you can sail whenever yon want to.
Come right over.

An hour later the manager of the Southampton
branch of the White Star line was dazzled by an ap-
parition, a beautiful girl who burst in upon him with
flushed face and shining eyes, demanding a berth on
the steamship Atlantic and talking about a Lady Weth-
erby. Ten minutes later, her passage secured, Claire
was walking to the local theater to inform those in
charge of the destinies of The Girl and the Artist num-
ber one company that they must look elsewhere for a
substitute for Miss Claudia Winslow. Then she went
back to her hotel to write a letter home, notifying her
mother of her plans.

She looked at her watch. It was six o'clock. Back
in West Kensington a rich smell of dinner would be
floating through the flat ; the cook, watching the boiling
cabbage, would be singing "A Few More Years Shall
Roll"; her mother would be sighing; and her little
brother Percy would be employed upon some juvenile
deviltry, the exact nature of which it was not possible
to conjecture, though one could be certain that it
would be something involving a deafening noise.

Claire smiled a happy smile.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

THE offices of Messrs. Nichols, Nichols, Nichols
and Nichols were in Lincoln's Inn Fields. They
were small and dingy, so small that new clients were apt
to wonder how on earth there was room in them for so
many Nicholses. They pictured a sort of Black Hole
of Calcutta in which Nichols fought with Nichols for
air.

The congestion was not quite so bad as that. The
first Nichols had been dead since the reign of King
William the Fourth, the second since the jubilee year
of Queen Victoria. The remaining brace were Lord
Dawlish's friend Jerry and his father, a formidable old
man who knew all the shady secrets of all the noble
families in England.

Bill walked up the stairs and was shown into the
room where Jerry, when his father's eye was upon him,
gave his daily imitation of a young man laboring with
diligence and enthusiasm at the law. His father being
at the moment out at lunch, the junior partner was
practicing putts with an umbrella and a ball of paper.

Jerry Nichols was not the typical lawyer. At Cam-
bridge, where Bill had first made his acquaintance, he
had been notable for an exuberance of which Lincoln's

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Inn Fields had not yet cured him. There was an airy
disregard for legal formalities about him which exas-
perated his father, an attorney of the old school. He
came to the point, directly Bill entered the room, with
a speed and levity that would have appalled Nichols
Senior and must have caused the other two Nicholses
to revolve in their graves.

"Hello, Bill, old man," he said, prodding him amiably
in the waistcoat with the ferrule of the umbrella.
"How's the boy? Fine! So'm I. So you got my mes-
sage? Wonderful invention, the telephone."

"I've just come from the club."

"Take a chair."

"What's the matter?"

Jerry Nichols thrust Bill into a chair and seated
himself on the table.

"Now look here, Bill," he said, "this isn't the way
we usually do this sort of thing, and if the governor
were here he would spend an hour and a half rambling
on about testators, and beneficiary legatees, and parties
of the first part, and all that sort of rot. But as he
isn't here I want to know, as one pal to another, what
you've been doing to an old buster of the name of
Nutcombe."

"Nutcombe?"

"Nutcombe."

"Not Ira Nutcombe?"

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Ira J. Nutcombe, formerly of Chicago, later of
London, now a disembodied spirit."

"Is he dead?"

"Yes. And he's left you five million dollars."

Lord Dawlish looked at his watch.

"Joking apart, Jerry, old man," he said, "what did
you ask me to come here for? The committee expects
me to spend some of my time at the club, and if I hang
about here all afternoon I shall lose my job. Besides,
Pve got to get back to ask them for "

Jerry Nichols clutched his forehead with both hands,
raised both hands to heaven, and then, as if despairing
of calming himself by these means, picked up a paper
weight from the desk and hurled it at a portrait of the
founder of the firm, which hung over the mantelpiece.
He got down from the table and crossed the room to
inspect the ruins.

Then, having taken a pair of scissors and cut the
cord, he allowed the portrait to fall to the floor.

He rang the bell. The prematurely aged office boy,
who was undoubtedly destined to become a member of
the firm some day, answered the ring.

"Perkins."

"Yes, sir."

"Inspect yonder soujfU"

"Yes, sir."

"You have observed it?"

4£

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Yes, sir."

"You are wondering how it got there?"

"Yes, sir."

"I will tell you. You and I were in here, discussing
certain legal minutiae in the interests of the firm, when
it suddenly fell. We both saw it and were very much
surprised and startled. I soothed your nervous system
by giving you this half-crown. The whole incident was
very painful Can you remember all this to tell my
father when he comes in? I shall be out lunching then."

"Yes, sir."

"An admirable lad that," said Jerry Nichols as the
door closed. "He has been here two years, and I have
never heard him say anything except 'Yes, sir.' He will
go far. Well, now that I am calmer let us return to
your little matter. Honestly, Bill, you make me sick.
When I contemplate you the iron enters my soul. You
stand there talking about your tuppenny-ha'penny job
as if it mattered a hang whether you kept it or not.
Can't you understand plain English? Can't you re-
alize that you can buy Brown's and turn it into a
moving-picture house if you like? You're a million-
aire!''

Bill's face expressed no emotion whatsoever. Out-
wardly he appeared unmoved. Inwardly he was a riot
of bewilderment, incapable of speech. He stared at
Jerry dumbly.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"We've got the will in the old oak chest," went on
Jerry Nichols. "I won't show it to you, partly because
the governor has got the key and he would have a fit if
he knew that I was giving you early information like
this, and partly because you wouldn't understand it-
It is full of ^whereases' and 'peradventures' and 'here-
tofores' and similar swank, and there aren't any stops
in it. It takes the legal mind, like mine, to tackle wills.
What it says, when you've peeled off a few of the long
words which they put in to make it more interesting, is
that old Nutcombe leaves you the money because you
are the only man who ever did him a disinterested kind-
ness— and what I want to get out of you is, what was
the disinterested kindness? Because I'm going straight
out to do it to every elderly, rich-looking man I can
find till I pick a winner."

Lord Dawlish found speech:

" Jerry, is this really true?"

"Gospel."

"You aren't pulling my leg?"

"Pulling your leg? Of course I'm not pulling
your leg. What do you take me for? I'm a dry,
hard-headed lawyer. The firm of Nichols, Nichols,
Nichols and Nichols doesn't go about pulling people's
legs?'

"Good Lord?'

"It appears from the will that you worked this dis-

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

interested gag, whatever it was, at .Marvis Bay no
longer ago than last year. Wherein you showed a lot
of sense, for Ira J., having altered his will in your
favor, apparently had no time before be died to alter it
again in somebody else's, which he would most certainly
have done if he had lived long enough, for his chief
recreation seems to have been making his will. To my
certain knowledge he has made three in the last two
years. I've seen them. He was one of those confirmed
will makers. He got the habit at an early age and was
never able to shake it off. Do you remember anything
about the man?"

"It isn't possible!"

"Anything's possible with a man cracked enough
to make freak wills and not cracked enough to have
them disputed on the ground of insanity. What did
you do to him at Marvis Bay? Save him from drown-
ing?"

"I cured him of slicing."

"You did what?"

"He used to slice his approach shots. I cured him."

"The thing begins to hang together. A certain
plausibility creeps into it. The late Nutcombe was
crazy about golf. The governor used to play with him
now and then at Walton Heath. It was the only thing
Nutcombe seemed to live for. That being so, if you got
rid of his slice for him it seems to me that you earned

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

your money. The only point that occurs to me is, how
does it affect your amateur status? It looks to me as
if you were now a pro."

"But, Jerry, it's absurd. All I did was to give him
a tip or two. We were the only men down there, as it
was out of the season, and that drew us together. And
when I spotted this slice of his I just gave him a bit of
advice. I give you my word that was all. He can't
have left me a fortune on the strength of thatP'

"You don't tell the story right, Bill. I can guess
what really happened — to wit, that you gave up your
entire vacation helping the old fellow improve his game,
regardless of the fact that it completely ruined your
holiday."

"Oh, no!"

"It's no use sitting there saying 'Oh, no P I can see
you at it. The fact is, you're such an infernally good
chap that something of this sort was bound to happen
to you sooner or later. I think making you his heir
was the only sensible thing old Nutcombe ever did. In
his place I'd have done the same."

"But he didn't seem even decently grateful at the
time."

"Probably not. He was a queer old bird. He had
a most almighty row with the governor in this office
only a month or two ago about absolutely nothing.
They disagreed about something trivial, and old Nut-

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

combe stalked out and never came in again. That's
the sort of old bird he was."

"Was he sane, do you think?"

"Absolutely, for legal purposes. We have three opin-
ions from leading doctors — collected by him in case of
accidents, I suppose — each of which declares him per-
fectly sound from the collar upward. But a man can
be pretty far gone, you know, without being legally
insane, and old Nutcombe — well, suppose we call him
whimsical. He seems to have zigzagged between the
normal and the eccentric.

"His only surviving relatives appear to be a nephew
and a niece. The nephew dropped out of the running
two years ago when his aunt, old Nutcombe's wife, who
had divorced old Nutcombe, left him her money. This
seems to have soured the old boy on the nephew, for in
the first of his wills that Fve seen — you remember I
told you I had seen three — he leaves the niece the pile
and the nephew only gets a hundred dollars. Well, so
far there's nothing very eccentric about old Nutcombe's
proceedings. But wait !

"Six months after he had made that will he came in
here and made another. This left a hundred dollars to
the nephew as before, but nothing at all to the niece.
Why, I don't know. There was nothing in the will
about her having done anything to offend him during
those six months, none of those nasty slams you see in

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

wills about : 'I bequeath to my only son John one shill-
ing and sixpence. Now perhaps he's sorry he married
the cook.' As far as I can make out he changed his
will, just as he did when he left the money to you,
purely through some passing whim. Anyway he
did change it. He left the pile to support the move-
ment those people are running for getting the Jews
back to Palestine.

"He didn't seem, on second thoughts, to feel that this
was quite such a brainy scheme as he had at first, and
it wasn't long before he came trotting back to tear up
this second will and switch back to the first one — the
one leaving the money to the niece. That restoration
to sanity lasted till about a month ago, when he broke
loose once more and paid his final visit here to will you
the contents of his stocking. This morning I see he's
dead after a short illness, so you collect. Congratula-
tions!"

Lord Dawlish had listened to this speech in perfect
silence. He now rose and began to pace the room. He
looked warm and uncomfortable. His demeanor, in
fact, was by no means the accepted demeanor of the
lucky heir.

"This is awful!" he said. "Good Lord, Jerry, it's
frightful."'

"Awful — being left five million dollars?"

"Yes, like this. I feel like a bally thief."

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Why on earth?"

"If it hadn't been for me, this girl — what's her
name?"

"Her name is Boyd— Elizabeth Boyd."

"She would have had the whole five millions if it
hadn't been for me. Have you told her yet?"

"She's over in America. I was writing her a letter
when you came in — informal, you know, to put her out
of her misery. If I had waited for the governor to let
her know in the usual course of red tape we should
never have got anywhere. Also one to the nephew,
telling him about his hundred dollars. I believe in hu-
mane treatment on these occasions. The governor
would write them a legal letter with so many *hereinbe-
fores' in it that they would get the idea that they
had been left the whole pile. I just send a cheery line,
saying, 'It's no good, old top. Abandon hope,' and
they know just where they are. Simple and con-
siderate !"

A glance at Bill's face moved him to further speech.

"I don't see why you should worry, Bill. How, by
any stretch of the imagination, can you make out that
you are to blame for this Boyd girl's misfortune? It
looks to me as if these eccentric wills of old Nutcombe's
came in cycles, as it were. Just as he was due for an-
other outbreak he happened to meet you. It's a moral
certainty that if he hadn't met you he would have left

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

all his money to a Home for Superannuated Caddies or
a Fund for Supplying the Deserving Poor with Nib-
licks, Why should you blame yourself ?"

"I don't blame myself. It isn't exactly that. But —
but, well, what would you feel like in my place ?"

"A two-year-old."

"Wouldn't you do anything?"

"I certainly would. By my halidom, I would! I
would spend that money with a vim and speed that
would make your respected ancestor, the Beau, look
like a village miser."

"You wouldn't — er — pop over to America and see
whether something couldn't be arranged?"

"What."'

"I mean — suppose you were popping in any case.
Suppose you had happened to buy a ticket for New
York on tomorrow's boat, wouldn't you try to gdt in
touch with this girl when you got to America, and see
if you couldn't— er — fix up something?"

Jerry Nichols looked at him in honest consternation*
He had always known that old Bill was a dear old ass,
but he had never dreamed that he was such an infernal
old ass as this.

"You aren't thinking of doing that?" he gasped.

"Well, you see, it's a funny coincidence, but I was
going to America anyhow tomorrow. I don't see why
I shouldn't try to fix up something with this girl."

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"What do you mean — fix up something? You don't
*ugge*t that you should give the money up, do you?"

"I don't know. Not exactly that, perhaps. How
would it be if I gave her half, what? Anyway I should
like to find out about her, see if she's hard up, and so
on. I should like to nose round, you know, and — er —
and so forth, don't you know. Where did you say the
girl lived?"

"I didn't say, and Fm not sure that I shall. Hon-
estly, Bill, you mustn't be so quixotic."

"There's no harm in my nosing round, is there? Be
a good chap and give me the address."

"Well, with misgivings — Brookport, Long Island."

"Thanks."

"Bill, are you really going to make a fool of your-
self?"

"Not a bit of it, old chap. Fm just going

"To nose round?"

"To nose round," said Bill.

Jerry Nichols accompanied his friend to the door,
and when he had closed it turned to the boy Perkins,
who was eating a sandwich and reading a handy pocket
edition of Dttlmgwater on Torts.

"Perkins," said Jerry.

"Yes, sir?"

"That was Lord Dawlish who just went out."

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Yes, sir."

"He's a fool."

"Yes, sir?"

"But I wish to heaven there were a few more like him
in this weary world."

"Yes, sir?"

Jerry regarded his young assistant thoughtfully.

"Don't you ever say anything except 'Yes, sir,' Per-
kins?"

"Yes, sir," said the stripling with a touch of surprise
in his voice. Jerry surveyed him a few moments longer,
then with a resigned shrug of his shoulders picked up
his hat and went out to lunch. The boy Perkins took
another bite out of his sandwich and resumed his study
of DiUingwater on Torts.

Peace reigned in the offices of Nichols, Nichols,
Nichols and Nichols.

The time of a man who has at a moment's notice de-
cided to leave his native land for a sojourn on foreign
soil is necessarily taken up with a variety of occupa-
tions ; and it was not till the following afternoon, on the
boat at Liverpool, that Bill had leisure to write to
Claire, giving her the news of what had befallen him.
He had booked his ticket by a Liverpool boat in pref-
erence to one that sailed from Southampton, because
he had not been sure how Claire would lake the news of
his sudden decision to leave for America. There was

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

the chance that she might ridicule or condemn the
scheme, and he preferred to get away without seeing
her. Now that he had received this astounding piece
of news from Jerry Nichols he was relieved that he had
acted in this way. Whatever Claire might have thought
of the original scheme, there was no doubt at all what
she would think of his plan of seeking out Elizabeth
Boyd with a view to dividing the legacy with her.

He was guarded in his letter. He mentioned no defi-
nite figures. He wrote that Ira Nutcombe, of whom
they had spoken so often, had most surprisingly left
him in his will a large sum of money, and eased his con-
science by telling himself that half of five million dollars
undeniably was a large sum of money.

The addressing of the letter called for thought. She
would have left Southampton with the rest of the com-
pany before it could arrive. Where was it that she said
they were going next week? Portsmouth, that was it.
He addressed the letter Care of The Girl and the Artist
Company, to the Song's Theater, Portsmouth.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

THE village of Brookport, Long Island, is a sum-
mer place. It lives, like the mosquitoes that
infest it, entirely on its summer visitors, that hardy
race which, once a year for a period of three months,
gives up th» comfort and coolness of spacious New
York apartments to stew in stuffy cottages along the
shores of the Great South Bay. At the time of the
death of Mr. Ira Nutcombe, the only all-the-year-round
inhabitants were the butcher, the grocer, the drug-
store man, the other customary fauna of villages, and
Miss Elizabeth Boyd, who rented the ramshackle farm
known locally as Flack's and eked out a precarious live-
lihood by keeping bees.

If you take down your Encyclopaedia Britannica —
Volume III, Aus to Bis, you will find that bees are a
"large and natural family of the zoological order Hy-
menoptera, characterized by the plumose form of many
of their hairs, by the large size of the basal segment
of the foot . . . and by the development of a tongue
for sucking liquid food/' the last of which peculiarities,
it is interesting to note, they shared with Claude Nut-
combe Boyd, Elizabeth's brother, who for quite a long
time — till his money ran out — had made liquid food

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

almost his sole means of sustenance. These things, how-
ever, are by the way. We are not such snobs as to
think better or worse of a bee because it can claim
kinship with the Hymenoptera family, nor so ill-bred
as to chaff it for having large feet. The really in-
teresting passage in the article occurs later, where it
says: "The bee industry prospers greatly in Amer-
ica."

This is one of those broad statements that invite
challenge. Elizabeth Boyd would have challenged it.
She had not prospered greatly. With considerable
trouble she contrived to pay her way, and that was all.

Again referring to the Encyclopaedia, we find the
words: "Before undertaking the management of a
modern apiary, the beekeeper should possess a certain
amount of aptitude for the pursuit." This was pos-
sibly the trouble with Elizabeth's venture, considered
from a commercial point of view. She loved bees, but
she was not an expert on them. She had started her
apiary with a small capital, a dollar book of practical
hints, and a secondhand queen, principally because she
was in need of some occupation that would enable her
to live in the country. It was the unfortunate condi-
tion of Claude Nutcombe which made life in the coun-
try a necessity. At that time he was spending the
remains of the money left him by his aunt, and Eliza-
beth had hardly settled down at Brookport and got

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

her venture under way when she found herself obliged
to provide for Nutty a combination of home and sana-
torium. It had been the poor lad's mistaken view-
that he could drink up all the alcoholic liquor in
America.

It is a curious law of Nature that the most undeserv-
ing brothers always have the best sisters. Thrifty,
plodding young men, who get up early, and do it now,
and catch the boss' eye, and save half their salaries,
have sisters who never speak civilly to them except
when they want to borrow money. To the Claude
Nutcombes of the world are vouchsafed the Elizabeths.

The great aim of Elizabeth's life was to make a
new man of Nutty. It was her hope that the quiet life
and soothing air of Brookport, with — unless you
counted the dime-in-the-slot musical box at the drug-
store— its absence of the fiercer excitements, might
in time pull him together and unscramble his disor-
dered nervous system. She liked to listen of a morning
to the sound of Nutty busy in the next room with a
broom and a dustpan, for in the simple lexicon of
Flack's there was no such word as "help." The privy
purse would not rim to maid or hired man. Elizabeth
did the cooking and Claude Nutcombe the chores.

Several days after Claire Fenwick and Lord Daw-
lish, by different routes, had sailed from England, Eliza-
beth Boyd sat up in bed and shook her mane of hair

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

from her eyes, yawning. Outside her window the birds
were singing, and a shaft of sunlight intruded itself
beneath the shade. But what definitely convinced her
that it was time to get up was the plaintive note of
James, the cat, patrolling the roof of the porch. An
animal of regular habits, James always called for break-
fast at eight-thirty sharp.

Elizabeth got out of bed, wrapped her small body
in a pink kimono, thrust her small feet into a pair of
blue slippers, yawned again and went downstairs. Hav-
ing taken last night's milk from the icebox, she went
to the back door and, having filled James9 saucer, stood
on the grass beside it, sniffing the morning air.

Elizabeth Boyd was twenty-one, but standing there
with her hair tumbling about her shoulders she might
have been taken by a not too close observer for a child.
It was only when you saw her eyes and the resolute
tilt of the chin that you realized that she was a young
woman very well able to take care of herself in a dif-
ficult world. Her hair was very fair, her eyes brown
and very bright, and the contrast was extraordinarily
piquant. They were valiant eyes, full of spirit; eyes,
also, that saw the humor of things. And her mouth
was the mouth of one who laughs easily. Her chin,
small like the rest of her, was strong ; and in the way
she held herself there was a boyish jauntiness. She
looked — and was — a capable little person*

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

She stood beside James like a sentinel, watching over
him as he breakfasted. There was a puppy belonging
to one of the neighbors, who sometimes lumbered over
and stole James' milk, disposing of it in greedy gulps
while its rightful proprietor looked on with piteous
helplessness. Elizabeth was fond of the puppy, but
her sense of justice was keen and she was there to check
this brigandage.

It was a perfect day, cloudless and still. There
was peace in the air. James, having finished his milk,
began to wash himself. A squirrel climbed cautiously
down from a linden tree. From the orchard came
the murmur of many bees.

Esthetically Elizabeth was fond of still, cloudless
days, but experience had taught her to suspect them. As
was the custom in that locality, the water supply de-
pended on a rickety wind wheel. It was with a dark
foreboding that she returned to the kitchen and turned
on one of the taps. For perhaps three seconds a stream
of the dimension of a darning needle emerged, then with
a sad gurgle the tap relapsed into a stolid inaction.
There is no stolidity so utter as that of a waterless tap.

"Damn!" said Elizabeth.

She passed through the dining-room to the foot of
the stairs.

"Nutty!"

There was no reply.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Nutty, my precious lamb!"

Upstairs in the room next to her own a long, spare
form began to uncurl itself in bed; a face with a re-
ceding chin and a small forehead raised itself reluc-
tantly from the pillow, and Claude Nutcombe Boyd
signalized the fact that he was awake by scowling at
the morning sun and uttering an aggrieved groan.

Alas, poor Nutty! This was he whom but yester-.
day Broadway had known as the Speed Kid, on whom
headwaiters had smiled and lesser waiters fanned;
whose snake-like form had nestled in so many a front-
row orchestra chair. Where were his lobster New-
burgs now, his cold quarts that were wont to set the
table in a roar?

Nutty Boyd conformed as nearly as a human being
may to Euclid's definition of a straight line. He was
length without breadth. From boyhood's early day
he had sprouted like a weed, till now in the middle
twenties he gave startled strangers the conviction that
it only required a sharp gust of wind to snap him in
half. Lying in bed he looked more like a length of
hose pipe than anything else. While he was unwinding
himself the door opened and Elizabeth came into the
room.

"Good morning, Nutty."

"What's the time?" asked her brother hollowly.

"Getting on for nine. It's a lovely day. The birds

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

are singing, the bees are buzzing, summer's in the air.
It's one of those beautiful, shiny, heavenly, gorgeous
days."

. A look of suspicion came into Nutty's eyes. Eliza-
beth was not often as lyrical as this.

"There's a catch somewhere," he said.

"Well, as a matter of fact," said Elizabeth care-
lessly, "the water's off again."

"Damn!"

"I said that. I'm afraid we aren't a very original
family."

"What a ghastly joint this is! Why can't you see
old Flack and make him fix that infernal wheel up?"

"I'm going to pounce on him and have another try
directly I see him. Meanwhile, darling Nutty, will you
get some clothes on and go round to the Smiths and
ask them to lend us a pailful?"

"Oh, gosh, it's over a mile!"

"No, no, not more than three-quarters."

"Lugging a pail that weighs a ton! The last time
I went there their dog bit me."

"I expect that was because you slunk in all doubled
up, and he got suspicious. You should hold your head
up and throw your chest out and stride up as if you
were a military friend of the family."

Self-pity lent Nutty eloquence.

"For heaven's sake! You drag me out of bed at

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

some awful hour of the morning when a rational per-
son would just be turning in ; you send me across coun-
try to carry pailfuls of water when I'm feeling like a
corpse; and on top of that you expect me to behave
like a drum majorP'

"Dearest, you can behave as you like, so long as
you get the fluid. We must have water. I can't fetch
it. Pm a delicately nurtured female."

"We ought to have a man to do these ghastly
jobs."

"But we can't afford one. Who do you think I am,
Nutty — Hetty Green? Just at present all I ask is
to be able to pay expenses. And, as a matter of
fact, you ought to be very thankful that you have
got »

"A roof over my head? I know. You needn't keep
rubbing it in."

Elizabeth flushed.

"I wasn't going to say that at all. What a pig you
are sometimes, Nutty ! As if I wasn't only too glad to
have you here! What I was going to say was that
you ought to be very thankful that you have got to
draw water and hew wood "

A look of absolute alarm came into Nutty's pallid
face.

"You don't mean to say that you want some wood
chopped?"

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"I was speaking figuratively. I meant hustle about
and work in the open air. The sort of life you are lead-
ing now is what millionaires pay hundreds of dollars
for at these physical culture places. It has been the
making of you."

"I don't feel made."

"Your nerves are ever so much better."

"They aren't."

Elizabeth looked at him in alarm.

"Oh, Nutty, you haven't been — seeing anything
again, have you?"

"Not seeing, dreaming. I've been dreaming about
monkeys. Why should I dream about monkeys if my
nerves were all right?"

"I often dream about all sorts of queer things."

"Have you ever dreamed that you were being chased
up Broadway by a chimpanzee in evening dress?"

"Never mind, dear, you'll be quite all right again
when you have been living this life down here a little
longer."

Nutty glared balefully at the ceiling.

"What's that darned thing up there? It looks like
a hornet. How on earth do these things get into the
house?"

"We ought to have nettings. I am going to pounce
on Mr. Flack about that too."

"Thank goodness this isn't going to last much longer.

Digitized by Vo^OOQ IC

Uneasy Money

It's nearly two weeks since Uncle Ira died. We ought
to be hearing from the lawyers any day now* There
might be a letter this morning."

"Do you think he has left us his money?"
"Do I? Why, what else could he do with it? We
are his only surviving relatives, aren't we? I've had
to go through life with a ghastly name like Nutcombe
as a compliment to him, haven't I? I wrote to him regu-
larly for Christmas and on his birthday, didn't I?
Well, then ! I have a hunch there will be a letter from
the lawyers today. I wish you would get dressed and
go down to the post-office while I'm toting that infernal
water. I can't think why the fools haven't cabled.
You would have supposed they would have thought
of that."

Elizabeth returned to her room to dress. She was
conscious of a feeling that nothing was quite perfect
in this world. It would be nice to have a great deal
of money, for she had a scheme in her mind which called
for a large capital; but she was sorry that it could
come to her only through the death of her uncle, of
whom, despite his somewhat forbidding personality, she
had always been fond. She was also sorry that a large
sum of money was coining to Nutty at that particular
point in his career, just when there seemed a hope
that the simple life might pull him together. She knew
Nutty too well not to be able to forecast his probable

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

behavior under the influence of a sudden restoration to
wealth.

While these thoughts were passing through her mind
she happened to glance out of the window. Nutty was
shambling through the garden with his pail, a bowed,
shuffling pillar of gloom. As Elizabeth watched he
dropped the pail and lashed the air violently for a
while. From her knowledge of bees — "It is necessary
to remember that bees resent outside interference and
will resolutely defend themselves," Encyc. Brit., Vol.
Ill, Aus to Bis — Elizabeth deduced that one of her lit-
tle pets was annoying him. This episode concluded,
Nutty resumed his pail and the journey, and at this
moment there appeared over the hedge the face of Mr.
John Prescott, a neighbor. Mr. Prescott, who had dis-
mounted from a bicycle, called to Nutty and waved
something in the air. To a strahger the performance
would have been obscure, but Elizabeth understood it.
Mr. Prescott was intimating that he had been down
to the post-office for his own mail and, as was his neigh-
borly custom on these occasions, had brought back
also letters for Flacks'.

Nutty foregathered with Mr. Prescott and took the
letters from him. Mr. Prescott disappeared. Nutty
selected one of the letters and opened it. Then, hav-
ing stood perfectly still for some moments, he suddenly
turned and began to run toward the house.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

The mere fact that her brother, whose usual mode
of progression was a languid saunter, should be ac-
tually running, was enough to tell Elizabeth that the
letter which Nutty had read was from the London
lawyers. No other communication could have galva-
nized him into such energy. Whether the contents of
the letter were good or bad it was impossible at that
distance to say. But when she reached the open air,
just as Nutty charged up, she saw by his face that it
was anguish, not joy, that had spurred him on. He was
gasping and he bubbled unintelligible words. His lit-
tle eyes gleamed wildly.

"Nutty, darling, what is it?" cried Elizabeth, every
maternal instinct in her aroused.

He was thrusting a sheet of paper at her, a sheet of
paper that bore the superscription of Nichols, Nichols,
Nichols and Nichols, with a London address.

"Uncle Ira " Nutty choked. "A hundred dol-
lars ! He's left me a hundred dollars, and all the rest
to a — to a man named Dawlish !"

In silence Elizabeth took the letter. It was even
as he had said. A few moments before Elizabeth had
been regretting the imminent descent of wealth upon
her brother. Now she was inconsistent enough to boil
with rage at the shattering blow which had befallen
him. That she, too, had lost her inheritance hardly
occurred to her. Her thoughts were all for Nutty.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

It did not need the sight of him, gasping and gurgling
before her, to tell her how overwhelming was his dis-
appointment.

It was useless to be angry with the deceased Mr.
Nutcombe. He was too shadowy a mark. Besides, he
was dead. The whole current of her wrath turned upon
the supplanter, this Lord Dawlish. She pictured him
as a crafty adventurer, a wretched fortune hunter. For
some reason or other she imagined him a sinister person
with a black mustache, a face thin and hawklike, and
unpleasant eyes. That was the sort of man who would
be likely to fasten his talons into poor Uncle Ira.

She had never hated anyone in her life before, but
as she stood there at that moment she felt that she
loathed and detested William, Lord Dawlish — unhappy,
well-meaning Bill, who only a few hours back had set
foot on American soil in his desire to nose round and
see if something couldn't be arranged.

Nutty got the water. Life is like that. There is
nothing clean cut about it, no sense of form. Instead
of being permitted to concentrate his attention on his
tragedy, Nutty had to trudge three-quarters of a mile
in a hot sun, conciliate a temperamental bull terrier,
and trudge back again carrying a heavy pafl. It was
as if one of the heroes of Greek drama, in the middle
of his big scene, had been asked to run round the corner
to a delicatessen store.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

The exercise did not act as a restorative. The blow
had been too sudden, too overwhelming. Nutty*8 rea-
son— such as it was — tottered on its throne. Who was
Lord Dawlish? What had he done, the smooth crook,
to ingratiate himself with Uncle Ira? By what insidi-
ous means, with what devilish cunning, had he wormed
his way into the old man's favor? These were the
questions that vexed Nutty's mind when he was able
to think at all coherently.

Back at the farm Elizabeth cooked breakfast and
awaited her brother's return with a sinking heart. She
was a soft-hearted girl, easily distressed by the sight
of suffering; and she was aware that Nutty was
scarcely of the type that masks its woe behind a brave
and cheerful smile. Her heart bled for Nutty.

There was a weary step outside. Nutty entered,
slopping water. One glance at his face was enough to
tell Elizabeth that she had formed a too conservative
estimate of his probable gloom. Without a word he
coiled his long form in a chair. There was silence in
the stricken house.

"What's the time?"

Elizabeth glanced at her watch.

"Half-past nine."

"About now," said Nutty sepulchraUy, "that pill
is ringing for his man to prepare his bally bath and
lay out his gold-leaf underwear. After that he will

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

drive down to the bank and draw some of our money."

The day passed wearily for Elizabeth. Nutty hav-
ing the air of one who is still engaged in picking up
the pieces, she had not the heart to ask him to play
his customary part in the household duties, so she
washed the dishes and made the beds herself. After
that she attended to the, bees. After that she cooked
lunch.

Nutty was not chatty at lunch, Having observed,
"About now the pill is cursing the waiter for bringing
the wrong brand of champagne," he relapsed into a
silence which he did not again break.

Elizabeth was busy again in the afternoon. At four
o'clock, feeling tired out, she went to her room to lie
down until the next of her cycle of domestic duties
should come round.

It was late when she came downstairs, for she had
fallen asleep. The sun had gone down. Bees were
winging their way heavily back to the hives with their
honey. She went out into the grounds to try to find
Nutty. There had been no signs of him in the house.
There were no signs of him in the grounds. It was
not like him to have taken a walk, but it seemed the
only possibility. She went back to the house to wait.
Eight o'clock came, and nine, and it was then that
the truth dawned upon her — Nutty had escaped. He
had slipped away and gone up to New York,

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

LORD DAWLISH sat in the apartment on
East Twenty-seventh Street which had beeii
lent him by his friend Gates. The hour was half-past
ten in the evening; the day, the second day after
the exodus of Nutty Boyd from the farm. Before
him on the table lay a letter. He was smoking
pensively.

Lord Dawlish had found New York enjoyable but
a trifle fatiguing. There was much to be seen in the
city, ahd he had made the mistake of trying to see
it all at once. It had been his intention, when he came
home after dinner that night, to try to restore the
balance of things by going to bed early. He had sat
up longer than he had intended because he had been
thinking about this letter.

Immediately upon his arrival in America Bill had
sought out a lawyer and instructed him to write to
Elizabeth Boyd, offering her one-half of the late Ira
Nutcombe's money. He had had time during the voy-
age to think the whole matter over, and this seemed to
him the only possible course. He could not keep it
all. He would feel like a despoiler of the widow and
the orphan. Nor would it be fair to Claire to give it

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

all up. If he halved the legacy everybody would be
satisfied.

That, at least, had been his view until Elizabeth's
reply had arrived. It was this reply that lay on the
table, a brief, formal note setting forth Miss Boyd's
absolute refusal to accept any portion of the money.
This was a development which Bill had not foreseen,
and he was feeling baffled. What was the next step?
He had smoked many pipes in the endeavor to find an
answer to this problem, and was lighting another
when the doorbell rang.

He opened the door and found himself confronting
an extraordinarily tall and thin young man in evening
dress.

Lord Dawlish was a little startled. He had taken it
for granted, when the bell rang, that his visitor was
Tom, the elevator man from downstairs, a friendly
soul who hailed from London and had been dropping
in at intervals during the past two days to acquire
the latest news from his native land. He stared at
this changeling inquiringly. The solution of the mys-
tery came with the stranger's first words:

"Is Gates in?"

He spoke eagerly, as if Gates were extremely neces-
sary to his well-being. It distressed Lord Dawlish to
disappoint him, but there was nothing else to be done.

"Gates is in London," he said.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

The stranger seemed staggered.

"What! When did he go there ?"

"About four months ago."

"May I come in a minute ?"

"Yes, rather, do."

He led the way into the sitting-room. The stranger
gave abruptly in the middle, as if he were being folded
up by some invisible agency, and in this attitude sank
into a chair, where he lay back looking at Bill over his
knees, like a sorrowful sheep peering over a sharp-
pointed fence.

"You're from England, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Been in New York long?"

"Only a couple of days."

The stranger folded himself up another foot or so
until his knees were higher than his head, and lit a
cigarette.

"The curse of New York," he said mournfully, "is
theway everything changes in it. You can't take your
eye off it for a minute. The population's always shift-
ing. It's like a damned railway station. You go
away for a spell and come back and try to find your
old pals, and they're all gone : Ike's in Arizona, Mike's
in a sanatorium, Spike's in jail, and nobody seems to
know where the rest of them have got to. I came back
from the country two days ago, expecting to find all

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

the old gang along Broadway the same as ever, and
I'm darned if I've been able to put my hands on one
of them! Not a single, solitary one of them! And
it's only six months since I was here last."

Lord Dawlish made sympathetic noises.

"Of course," proceeded the other, "the time of year
may have something to do with it. Living down in
the country you lose count of time, and I forgot that
it was July when people go out of the city. I guess
that must be what happened. I used to know all
sorts of fellows, actors and fellows like that, and they're
all away somewhere. I tell you," he said with pathos,
"I never knew I could be so infernally lonesome as
I have been these last two days. If I had known what
a rotten time I was going to have I would never have
left Brookport."

"Brookport?"

"It's a place down on Long Island."

Bill was not by nature a plotter, but the mere fact
of traveling under an assumed name had developed a
streak of wariness in him. He checked himself just
as he was about to ask his companion if he happened
to know a Miss Elizabeth Boyd who also lived at
Brookport. It occurred to him that the question would
invite a counter question as to his own knowledge of
Miss Boyd, and he knew that he would not be able to
invent a satisfactory answer to that offhand.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"This evening," said the thin young man, resuming
his dirge, "I was sweating my brain to try to think
of somebody I could hunt up in this ghastly, deserted
city. It isn't so easy, you know, to think of fellows*
names and addresses. I can get the names all right,
but unless the fellow's in the telephone book Fm done.
Well, I was trying to think of some of my pals who
might still be round the place, and I remembered Gates.
Remembered his address, too, by a miracle. You're a
pal of his, of course?"

"Yes, I knew him in London."

"Oh, I see. And when you came over here he lent
you his apartment? By the way, I didn't get your
name?"

"My name's Chalmers."

"Well, as I say, I remembered Gates and came down
here to look him up. We used to have a lot of good
times together a year ago. And now he's gone
too!"

"Did you want to see him about anything impor-
tant?"

"Well, it's important to me. I wanted him to come
out to supper. You see it's this way: I'm giving sup-
per tonight to a girl who's in that show at the Forty-
ninth Street Theater, a Miss Leonard, and she insists
on bringing a pal. She says the pal is a good sport,

which sounds all right " Bill admitted that it

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

sounded all right. "But it makes the party three.
And of all the infernal things a party of three is the
ghastliest."

Having delivered himself of this undeniable truth,
the stranger slid a little farther into his chair and
paused.

"Look here, what are you doing tonight?" he said.

"I was thinking of going to bed."

"Going to bed !" The stranger's voice was shocked,
as if he had heard blasphemy. "Going to bed at half-
past ten in New York ! My dear chap, what you want
is a bit of supper. Why don't you come along?"

Amiability was perhaps the leading quality of Lord
Dawlish's character. He did not want to have to dress
and go out to supper, but there was something al-
most pleading in the eyes that looked at him between
the sharply pointed knees.

"It's awfully good of you— — " he hesitated.

"Not a bit, I wish you would. You would be a life-
saver."

Bill felt that he was in for it. He got up.

"You will?" said the other. "Good boy! You go
and get into some clothes and come along. I'm sorry,
what did you say your name was?"

"Chalmers."

"Mine's Boyd — Nutcombe Boyd."

"Boyd!" cried Bill

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Nutty took his astonishment, which was too great
to be concealed, as a compliment. He chuckled*

"I thought you would know the name if you were a
pal of Gates'. I expect he's always talking about me.
I was pretty well known in this old burg before I had
to leave it."

Bill walked down the long passage to his bedroom
with no trace of the sleepiness which had been weighing
on him five minutes before. He was galvanized by a
superstitious thrill. It was fate, Elizabeth Boyd's
brother turning up like this and making friendly over-
tures right on top of that letter from her. This as-
tonishing thing could not have been better arranged
if he had planned it himself. From what little he had
seen of Nutty he gathered that the latter was not hard
to make friends with. It would be a simple task to
cultivate his acquaintance. And having done so, he
could renew negotiations with Elizabeth. The desire
to rid himself of half the legacy had become a fixed idea
with Bill. He had the impression that he could not
really feel clean again until he had made matters square
with his conscience in this respect. He felt that he
was probably a fool to take that view of the thing,
Vut that was the way he was built and there was no
getting away from it.

This irruption of Nutty Boyd into his life was an
omen. It meant that all was not yet over. He was

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

conscious of a mild surprise that he had ever intended
to go to bed. He felt now as if he never wanted to go
to bed again. He felt exhilarated.

In these days, when restaurants bask in the absence
of a closing-time law, one cannot say that a supper
party is actually given in any one place. Supping in
New York has become a peripatetic pastime. The sup-
per party arranged by Nutty Boyd was scheduled to
start at Riegelheimer's, on Forty-second Street, and it
was there that the revelers assembled. Nutty and Bill
had been there a few minutes when Miss Daisy Leonard
arrived with her friend. And from that moment Bill
was never himself again.

The Good Sport was, so to speak, an out-size in
good sports. She loomed up behind the small and de-
mure Miss Leonard like a liner towed by a tug. She
was big, blond, skittish and exuberant ; she wore a dress
like the sunset of a fine summer evening and she ef-
fervesced with spacious good will to all men. She was
one of those girls who splash into public places like
stones into quiet pools. Her form was large, her eyes
were large, her teeth were large and her voice was large.
She overwhelmed Bill. She hit his astounded conscious-
ness like a shelL She gave him a buzzing in the ears.
She was not so much a Good Sport as some kind of an
explosion.

He was still reeling from the spiritual impact with

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

this female tidal wave when he became aware, as one
who, coming out of a swoon, hears voices faintly, that
he was being addressed by Miss Leonard. To turn from
Miss Leonard's friend to Miss Leonard herself was
like hearing the falling of gentle rain after a thunder-
storm. For a moment he reveled in the sense of being
soothed; then, as he realized what she was saying, he
started violently. Miss Leonard was looking at him
curiously.

"I beg your pardon ?" said BilL

"I'm sure I've met you before, Mr. Chalmers."

"Er— really?"

"But I can't think where."

"I'm sure," said the Good Sport languishingly, like
a sentimental siege gun, "that if I had ever met Mr.
Chalmers before I shouldn't have forgotten him."

"You're English, aren't you?" asked Miss Leonard.

"Yes."

The Good Sport said she was crazy about English-
men.

"I thought so from your voice."

The Good Sport said she was crazy about the Eng-
lish accent.

"It must have been in London that I met you. I
wag in the revue at the Alhambra last year."

"By George, I wish I had seen you," interjected the
infatuated Nutty.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

The Good Sport said she was crazy about London.

"I seem to remember," went on Miss Leonard, "meet-
ing you out at supper. Do you know a man named
Delaney in the Coldstream Guards?"

Bill would have liked to deny all knowledge of De-
laney, though the latter was one of his best friends,
but his natural honesty prevented him.

"Fm sure I met you at a supper he gave at Oddy's
one Friday night. We all went on to Covent Garden.
Don't you remember?"

'Talking of supper," broke in Nutty, earning Bill's
hearty gratitude thereby, "where's the head waiter? I
want to find my table."

He surveyed the restaurant with a melancholy
eye.

"Everything changed P' He spoke sadly, as Ulysses
might have done when his boat put in at Ithaca. "Every .
darned thing different since I was here last. New
waiters, headwaiter I never saw before in my life, dif-
ferent colored carpet "

"Cheer up, Nutty, old thing," said Miss Leonard.
"Cut the Rip van Winkle stuff and find our table.
You'll feel better when you've had something to eat. I
hope you had the sense to slip the headwaiter some-
thing solid, or there won't be any table. Funny how
these joints go up and down in New York. A year
ago the whole management would turn out and kiss you

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

if you looked like spending a couple of dollars here.
Now it costs the earth to get in at all."

"Why's that?" asked Nutty.

"Lady Pauline Wetherby, of course. Didn't you
know this was where she danced?"

"Never heard of her," said Nutty, in a sort of ec-
stasy of wistful gloom. "That will show you how long
I've been away. Who is she?"

Miss Leonard invoked the name of Mike.

"Don't you ever get the papers in your village,
Nutty?"

"I never read the papers. I don't suppose Fve read
a paper for years. I can't stand 'em. Who is Lady
Pauline Wetherby?"

"She does Greek dances — at least I suppose it's
Greek* All these undress stunts are nowadays, un-
less they're Russian. She's an English peeress."

Miss Leonard's friend said she was crazy about
these picturesque old English families, and they went
in to supper.

Looking back on the evening later and reviewing
its leading features, Lord Dawlish came to the con-
clusion that he never completely recovered from the
first shock of the Good Sport. He was conscious all
the time of a dream-like feeling, as if he were watch-
ing himself from somewhere outside himself. From

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

some conning tower in this fourth dimension he per-
ceived himself eating broiled lobster and drinking cham-
pagne and heard himself bearing an adequate part
in the conversation ; but his movements were largely au-
tomatic. Everything in the place conspired to stupefy
his faculties. Accustomed to the quieter atmosphere of
London restaurants, he was stunned by the din. It
was before night clubs spread over London like an epi-
demic, and he had not learned the lesson which the
Londoner today knows so well, that there is practically
no limit to the noise which half a dozen earnest Sene-
gambians can produce if left alone with a few banjos
and a drum or two. He was aware dimly of conversa-
tion.

". . . It's the absolute truth. I hunted up and down
Broadway for two days and didn't find a soul I knew.
And then I thought of a pal of mine named Grates.
And he was gone too. But luckily Chalmers . . ."

". . . I got him in a corner and I said to him: 'If
you're a gentleman, Mr. Ritchall, you'll see that justice
is done. You know I was promised I could be in this

number, and ' He's as deaf as a post, you know,

but fortunately I've a good, strong voice . . ."

". . . Who's that girl over there? I've met her
somewhere."

". . . I feel a hundred. I feel as if I had been
away a million years . . ."

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

". . • So the end of it was that next night, when
the number came on, I walked straight up and . . ."

". . . Only her hair was a different color then."

"Waiter!"

". . . He had the nerve to stand there and pull that
old-time stuff on me!"

"By Jove! Really?"

"Waiter P*

". . . She used to be married to a man named
Fothergill or Groves or something, and she got a di-
vorce because . . ."

"Ye«, sir?"

"Bring another . . ."

". . . I simply said to him quite quietly : *Mr. Zizz-
baum, as heaven is my witness, they were at least three
sizes too small, so how could I be expected . • .* "

Pop!

Time passed. It seemed to Lord Dawlish, watch-
ing from without, that things were livening up. He
seemed to perceive a quickening of the tempo of the
revels, an added abandon. Nutty was getting quite
bright. He had the air of one who recalls the good
old days, of one who in familiar scenes reenacts the
joys of his vanished youth. The chastened melancholy
induced by many months of carrying pails of water,
of scrubbing floors with a mop and of jumping like a

Digitized by VjOOQ iC

Uneasy Money

firecracker to avoid excited bees, had been purged from
him by the lights and the music and the wine. He was
telling a long anecdote, laughing at it, throwing a crust
of bread at an adjacent waiter, and refilling his glass at
the same time. It is not easy to do all these things
simultaneously, and the fact that Nutty did them with
notable success was proof that he was picking up.

Miss Daisy Leonard was still demure, but as she
had just slipped a piece of ice down the back of Nutty's
neck, one may assume that she was feeling at her ease,
and had overcome any diffidence or shyness which might
have interfered with her complete enjoyment of the fes-
tivities. As for the Good Sport, she was larger, blonder
and more exuberant than ever, and she was addressing
someone as "Bill"

Perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon of the
evening, as it advanced, was the change it wrought
in Lord Dawlish's attitude toward this same Good
Sport. He was not conscious of the beginning of
the change ; he awoke to the realization of it suddenly.
At the beginning of supper his views on her had been
definite and clear. When they had first been intro-
duced to each other he had had a stunned feeling
that this sort of thing ought not to be allowed at
large, and his battered brain had instinctively recalled
that line of Tennyson: 'The curse is come upon me."
But now, warmed with food and drink and smoking ao

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

excellent cigar, he found that a gentler, more chari-
table mood had descended upon him.

He argued with himself in extenuation of the girl's
peculiar idiosyncrasies. Was it, he asked himself, al-
together her fault that she was so massive and spoke
as if she were addressing an open-air convention in a
strong gale? Perhaps it was hereditary. Perhaps her
father had been a circus giant and her mother the
strong woman of the troupe. And for the unrestraint
of her manner defective training in early girlhood would
account. He began to regard her with a quiet, kindly
commiseration, which in its turn changed into a sort
of brotherly affection. He discovered that he liked
her. He liked her very much. She was so big and
jolly and robust, and spoke in such a clear, full voice.
He was glad that she was patting his ,hand. He was
glad that he had asked her to call him Bill. He was
glad — for it showed that he had won her confidence —
that she had twice told him the rather long story of
how badly the stage director had treated her by leaving
her out of the Bully, Bully Summer Time number.

People were dancing now. It has been claimed by
patriots that American dyspeptics lead the world. This
supremacy, though partly due no doubt to vast sup-
plies of pie absorbed in youth, may be attributed to
a certain extent also to the national habit of dancing
during meals. Lord Dawlish had that sturdy reverence

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

for his interior organism which is the birthright of
every Briton, and at the beginning of supper he had
resolved that nothing should induce him to court
disaster in this fashion. But as the time went on he
began to waver.

The situation was awkward. Nutty and Miss Leon-
ard were repeatedly leaving the table to tread the
measure, and on these occasions the Good Sport's
wistfulness was a haunting reproach. Nor was the
spectacle of Nutty in action without its effect on Bill's
resolution. Nutty dancing was a sight to stir the most
stolid. Six months9 abstinence had keyed him up, and
he was throwing himself into the thing in a way that
recalled the gentleman in the poem who had fed on
honey-dew and drunk the milk of Paradise:

Beware, beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair.
Weave a circle round him thrice.

A stimulating spectacle!

Bill wavered. The music had started again now, one
of those twentieth-century eruptions of sound that be-
gin like a train going through a tunnel and continue
like audible electric shocks, that set the feet tapping
beneath the table and the spme thrilling with an un-
accustomed exhilaration. Every drop of blood in his

Digitized by Lj'OOQ IC

Uneasy Money

body cried to him "Dance !" He could resist no longer. •

"Shall we?" he said.

His companion rose as if impelled by powerful ma-
chinery. She said she was crazy about dancing. Bill
should not have danced. He was an estimable young
man, honest, amiable, with high ideals. He had played
an excellent game of football at the university; his
golf handicap was plus two ; and he was no mean per-
former with the gloves. But we all of us have our
limitations, and Bill had his. He was not a good
dancer. He was energetic, but he required more el-
bow room than the ordinary dancing floor provides.
As a dancer, in fact, he closely resembled a Newfound-
land puppy trying to run across a field.

It takes a good deal to daunt the New York dancing
man, but the invasion of the floor by Bill and the Good
Sport undoubtedly caused a profound and even painful
sensation. Linked together they formed a living
projectile which might well have intimidated the brav-
est. Nutty was their first victim. They caught him
in midstep — one of those fancy steps which he was just
beginning to exhume from the cobwebbed recesses of
his memory — and swept him away. After which they
descended irresistibly upon a stout gentleman of mid-
dle age, chiefly conspicuous for the glittering dia-
monds which he wore and the stoical manner in which
he danced to and fro on one spot of not more than

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

a few inches in size in the exact center of the room.
He had apparently staked out a claim to this small
spot, a claim which the other dancers had decided to
respect ; but Bill and the Good Sport, coming up from
behind, had him two yards away from it at the first im-
pact. Then, scattering apologies broadcast like a
medieval monarch distributing largesse, Bill whirled his
partner round by sheer muscular force and began what
he intended to be a movement toward the farther cor-
ner, skirting the edge of the floor. It was his simple
belief that there was more safety there than in the
middle.

He had not reckoned with Heinrich Joerg. Indeed
he was not aware of Heinrich Joerg*s existence. Yet
fate was shortly to bring them together with far-reach-
ing results. Heinrich Joerg had left the Fatherland
some three years before with the prudent purpose of
escaping military service. After various vicissitudes in
the land of his adoption — which it would be extremely
interesting to relate, but which must wait for a more
favorable opportunity — he had secured a useful and
not ill-recompensed situation as one of the staff of
Riegelheimer's Restaurant. He was, in point of fact,
a waiter, and he comes into the story at this point bear-
ing a tray full of glasses, knives, forks, and pats of but-
ter on little plates. He was setting a table for some
new arrivals, and in order to obtain more scope for

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

"Along came Bill at his customary high rate of speed."

s^U^

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

that task he had left the crowded aisle beyond the
table and come round to the edge of the dancing
floor.

He should not have come out on the dancing floor.
In another moment he was admitting that himself.
For just as he was lowering his tray and bending over
the table in the pursuance of his professional duties,
along came Bill at his customary high rate of speed,
propelling his partner before him, and for the first
time since he left home Heinrich was conscious of a
regret that he had done so. There are worse things
than military service.

It was the table that saved Bill. He clutched at
it and it supported him. He was thus enabled to keep
the Good Sport from falling, and to assist Heinrich
to rise from the morass of glasses, knives, and pats of
butter in which he was wallowing. Then, the dance
having been abandoned by mutual consent, he helped his
now somewhat hysterical partner back to their table.

Remorse came upon Bill. He was sorry that he
had danced; sorry that he had upset Heinrich; sorry
that he had subjected the Good Sport's nervous sys-
tem to such a strain; sorry that so much glass had
been broken and so many pats of butter bruised beyond
repair. But of one thing, even in that moment of bleak
regrets, he was distinctly glad, and that was that all
these things had taken place three thousand miles

'Digitized by VjOOQIC

Uneasy Money

away from Claire Fenwick. He had not been appear-
ing at his best, and he was glad that Claire had not
seen him.

As he sat and smoked the remains of his cigar, while
renewing his apologies and explanations to his partner
and soothing the ruffled Nutty with well-chosen condo-
lences, he wondered idly what Claire was doing at that
moment. Claire at that moment, having been an as-
tonished eyewitness of the whole performance, was
resuming her seat at a table at the other end of the
room.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

fTlHERE were two reasons why Lord Dawlish was
X unaware of Claire Fenwick's presence at Riegel-
heimer's Restaurant. Riegelheimer's is situated in a
basement below a ten-story building, and in order to
prevent this edifice from falling into his patrons' soup
the proprietor had been obliged to shore up his ceiling
with massive pillars. One of these obtruded itself
between the table which Nutty had secured for his sup-
per party and the table at which Claire was sitting with
her friend, Lady Wetherby, and her steamer acquaint-
ance, Mr. Dudley Pickering. That was why Bill had
not seen Claire from where he sat ; and the reason that
he had not seen her when he left his seat and began
to dance was that he was not one of your dancers
who glance airily about them. When Bill danced he
danced.

He would have been stunned with amazement if he
had known that Claire was at Riegelheimer's that night.
And yet it would have been remarkable, seeing that
she was the guest of Lady Wetherby, if sh* had not
been there. When you have traveled three thousand
miles to enjoy the hospitality of a friend who does
near-Greek dances at a popular restaurant, the least

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

you can do is to go to the restaurant and watch her
step. Claire had arrived with Polly Wetherby and Mr.
Dudley Pickering at about the time when Nutty, his
gloom melting rapidly, was instructing the waiter to
open the second bottle.

Of Claire's movements between the time when she
secured her ticket at the White Star offices at South-
ampton and the moment when she entered Riegel-
heimer's Restaurant, it is not necessary to give a de-
tailed record. She had had the usual experiences of
the 'ocean voyager. She had fed, read and gone to
bed. The only notable event in her trip had been her
intimacy with Mr. Dudley Pickering.

Dudley Pickering was a middle-aged Middle West-
erner, who by thrift and industry had amassed a con-
siderable fortune out of automobiles. He could ac-
commodate you with an automobile suited to every
stage of your growing prosperity. When you were
young and struggling you bought his Little Pick at
four hundred dollars. Becoming older and more opu-
lent you put down eleven hundred for his Pickering
Gem. And it might be that in time, having passed
through the intermediate stages and being in a posi-
tion to blow the expense, you found yourself the pos-
sessor of a Pickering Giant, the best car on the market.
Everybody spoke well of Dudley Pickering. The pa-
pers spoke well of him, Bradstreet spoke well of him,

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

and he spoke well of himself. On board the liner he
had poured the saga of his life into Claire's attentive
ears, and though by the end of the voyage she had
forgotten that he had started life with half a dollar,
she still remembered that he was ending it with twenty
or thirty millions, and there was a gentle sweetness
in her manner which encouraged Mr. Pickering mightily,
for he had fallen in love with Claire on sight.

It would seem that a schoolgirl in these advanced
days would know what to do when she found that a
man with thirty million dollars was in love with her;
yet there were factors in the situation which gave
Claire pause. Lord Dawlish, of course, was one of
them. She had not mentioned Lord Dawlish to Mr.
Pickering, and — doubtless lest the sight of it might
pain him — she had abstained from wearing her engage-
ment ring during the voyage. But she had not com-
pletely lost sight of the fact that she was engaged
to Bill. Another thing that caused her to hesitate
was th* fact that Dudley Pickering, however wealthy,
was a most colossal bore. As far as Claire could as-
certain on their short acquaintance, he had but one
subject of conversation — automobiles.

To Claire an automobile was a shiny thing with
padded seats, in which you rode if you were lucky
enough to know somebody who owned one. She had
no wish to go more deeply into the matter. Dudley

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Pickering's attitude toward automobiles, on the other
hand, more nearly resembled that of a surgeon toward
the human body. To him a car was something to dis-
sect, something with an interior that was interesting
to explore and fascinating to talk about. He revealed
the internal mechanism of his Pickering Giant in a way
that was almost indecent. He laid bare its vital or-
gans and lectured on them. He spoke freely of things
that a modest automobile hides from view. Claire lis-
tened with a radiant display of interest, but she had
her doubts as to whether any amount of money would
make it worth while to undergo this sort of thing for
life. She was still in this hesitant frame of mind when
she entered Riegelheimer's Restaurant, and it perturbed
her that she could not come to some definite decision
on Mr. Pickering, for those subtle signs which every
woman can recognize and' interpret told her that the
latter, having paved the way by talking machinery
for a week, was about to boil over and speak of higher
things. At the very next opportunity she was cer-
tain he intended to propose.

The presence of Lady Wetherby acted as a tem-
porary check on the development of the situation, but
after they had been seated at their table a short time
the lights of the restaurant were suddenly lowered, a
colored spotlight became manifest near the roof, and
classical music made itself heard from the fiddles in

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

the orchestra. You could tell it was classical, because
the banjo players were leaning back and chewing gum;
and in New York restaurants only death or a classical
specialty can stop ban joists. There was a spatter of
applause and Lady Wetherby removed her sandals.

"This," she explained to Claire, "is where I do my
stunt. Watch it. I invented the steps myself. Clas-
sical stuff. It's called the Dream of Psyche."

It was difficult for one who knew her as Claire did
to associate Polly Wetherby with anything classical.
On the road, in England, when they had been fellow-
members of the number two company of The Heavenly
Waltz, Polly had been remarkable chiefly for a fund of
humorous anecdote and a gift, amounting almost to
genius, for doing battle with militant landladies. And
renewing their intimacy after a hiatus of a little less
than a year, Claire had found her unchanged. The
moment before the music started Lady Wetherby, ever
a warm patron of sport, had been arguing forcefully
in favor of the view — opposed, it seemed, by a bunch
of boneheaded boobs on certain of the daily papers —
that the Tennessee Bear-cat, though eclipsed by showier
rivals over the ten-round route, would be lightweight
champion of the world tomorrow if he could only suc-
ceed in luring his most prominent rival into the ring
for a forty-five-round contest. Claire found herself
wondering how her friend could possibly shake off this

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

mood and prepare herself at a moment's notice to give
an artistic rendition of the Dream of Psyche.

As a matter of fact, Lady Wetherby did not. Per-
haps it was the association of ideas, but it seemed to
Claire that the Dream of Psyche, as interpreted in
terms of the dance by her friend, was far less like a
Dream of Psyche than a troubled nightmare of the
Tennessee Bear-cat, fallen asleep while brooding on
how he should induce the lightweight champion to fight
him to a finish. As the performance proceeded she
could well believe that it was Polly Wetherby who had
invented the steps.

It was a truculent affair, this Dream of Psyche. It
was not so much dancing as shadow boxing. It began
mildly enough to the accompaniment of pizzicato strains
from the orchestra — Psyche in her training quarters.
RdUentando— Psyche punching the bag. Diminuendo
— Psyche using the medicine ball. Presto — Psyche
doing road work. Forte — The night of the fight. And
then things began to move to a climax. With the fid-
dles working themselves to the bone and the piano
bounding under its persecutor's blows, Lady Wetherby
ducked, side-stepped, rushed and sprang, moving
her arms in a manner that may have been classical
Greek, but to the untrained eye looked much more
like the bust round of an open-air bout at Ebbet's
Field.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

It was halfway through the exhibition, when you
could smell the sawdust and hear the seconds shouting
advice under the ropes, that Claire, who never having
seen anything in her life like this extraordinary per-
formance had been staring spellbound, awoke to the re-
alization that Dudley Pickering was proposing to her.
It required a woman's intuition to divine this fact, for
Mr. Pickering was not coherent. He did not go straight
to the point. He rambled. But Claire understood,
and it came to her that this thing had taken her be-
fore she was ready. In a brief while she would have
to give an answer of some sort, and she had not clearly
decided what answer she meant to give.

Then while he was still skirting his subject, before
he had wandered to what he really wished to say, the
music stopped, the applause broke out again, and Lady
Wetherby returned to the table like a pugilist seeking
his corner at the end of a round. Her face was flushed
and she was breathing hard.

"They pay me money for that!" she observed geni-
ally. "Can you beat it !"

The spell was broken. Mr. Pickering sank back in
his chair in a punctured manner. And Claire, making
monosyllabic replies to her friend's remarks, was able
to bend her mind to the task of finding out how she
stood on this important Pickering issue. That he would
return to the attack as soon as possible she knew ; and

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

next time she must have her attitude dearly defined
one way or the other.

Lady Wetherby, having got the Dance of Psyche
out of her system and replaced it with a glass of iced
coffee, was inclined for conversation.

"Algie called me up on the phone this evening,
Claire."

"Yes?"

Claire was examining Mr. Pickering with furtive
side glances. He was not handsome, nor, on the other
hand, was he repulsive. Undistinguished was the ad-
jective that would have described him. He was in-
clined to stoutness, but not unpardonably so; his hair
was thin, but he was not aggressively bald ; his face was
dull, but certainly not stupid. There was nothing in
his outer man which thirty million dollars would not
offset. As regarded his other qualities, his conversa-
tion was certainly not exhilarating. But that also
was not, under certain conditions, an unforgivable
thing. No, looking at the matter all round and weigh-
ing it with care, the real obstacle, Claire decided, was
not any quality or lack of qualities in Dudley Pick-
ering— it was Lord Dawlish and the simple fact that
it would be extremely difficult, if she discarded him in
favor of a richer man without any ostensible cause, to
retain her self-respect.

"I think he's weakening."

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Yes."

Yes, that was the crux of the matter. She wanted to
retain her good opinion of herself. And in order to
achieve that end it was essential that she find some ex-
cuse, however trivial, for breaking off the engage-
ment.

"His voice was quite hollow, poor dear! You know,
Claire, I'm wild about Algie, but it would never do to
let him think he could boss me. He's the kind that if
you give him a thingummy takes a what-d'you-call-it."

"Yes?"

A waiter approached the table.

"Mr. Pickering?"

The thwarted lover came to life with a start.

"Eh?"

"A gentleman wishes to speak to you on the tele-
phone."

"Oh, yes. I was expecting a long-distance call, Lady
Wetherby, and left word I should be here. Will you ex-
cuse me?"

Lady Wetherby watched him as he bustled across
the room.

"What do you think of him, Claire?"

"Mr. Pickering? I think he's very nice."

"He admires you frantically. I hoped he would.
That's why I wanted you to come over on the same
ship with him."

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Polly! I had no notion that you were such a
schemer."

"I would just love to see you two fix it up," con-
tinued Lady Wetherby earnestly. "He may not be
what you might call a cut-up, but he's a darned good
sort, and thirty millions helps, doesn't it? You don't
want to overlook that thirty millions, Claire !"

"I do like Mr. Pickering."

"Claire, he asked me if you were engaged."

"What!"

"When I told him you weren't, he beamed. Hon-
estly, you've only got to lift your little finger and

Oh, good Lord, there's Algie !"

Claire looked up. A dapper, trim little man of
about forty was threading his way among the tables
in their direction. It was a year since Claire had
seen Lord Wetherby, but she recognized him at once.
He had a red, weather-beaten face with a suspicion
of side-whiskers, small, pink-rimmed eyes with sandy
eyebrows, the smoothest of sandy hair, and a chin so
cleanly shaven that it was difficult to believe that
hair had ever grown there. Although his evening
dress was perfect in every detail he conveyed a subtle
suggestion of horsiness. He was one of those English
aristocrats who seem just to have missed being grooms,
and who escape the groom type only by their shiny
cleanliness and the extreme excellence of the fit of

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

their clothes. He reached the table and sat down with-
out invitation in the vacant chair.

"Pauline !" he said sorrowfully.

"Algie," said Lady Wetherby tensely, "I don't know
what you've come here for, and I don't remember ask-
ing you to sit down and put your elbows on the table,
but I want to begin by saying that I will not be called
Pauline. My name's Polly. You've got a way of say-
ing Pauline, as if it were a gentlemanly cuss-word, that
makes me want to scream. And while you're about it,
why don't you say how-d'you-do to Claire? You ought
to remember her, she was my bridesmaid."

"How do you do, Miss Fenwick? Of course I remem-
ber you perfectly. I'm glad to see you again."

"And now, Algie, what is it? Why have you come
here?" Lord Wetherby looked doubtfully at Claire.
"Oh, that's afl right," said Lady Wetherby. "Claire
knows all about it — I told her."

"Ah ! Then if Miss Fenwick has heard of our little
tiff "

"Don't call it a little tiff. It was a scrap!"

"My dear! Really!"

"A scrap!" repeated Lady Wetherby firmly. "A
regular all-in, what-Sherman-said scrap, which you
began. And if you think you're going to wriggle out
of it by calling it a little tiff, take one additional
guess P*

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"My dear, I am not trying to wriggle out of it. I
think I was justified in taking the attitude I did toward
your snake Clarence. I appeal to Miss Fenwick, if, as
you say, she knows all the facts of the case, to say
whether it is reasonable to expect a man of my tem-
perament, a nervous, highly strung artist, to welcome
the presence of snakes at the breakfast table. I trust
that I am not an unreasonable man, but I decline to
admit that a long green snake is a proper thing to
keep about the house.'9

"You had no right to strike the poor thing."

"In that one respect I was perhaps a little hasty.
I happened to be stirring my tea at the moment his
head rose above the edge of the table. I was not en-
tirely myself that morning. My nerves were somewhat
disordered. I had lain awake much of the night plan-
ning a canvas."

"Planning a what?"

"A canvas, my dear — a picture."

Lady Wetherby turned to Claire.

"I want you to listen to Algie, Claire. You hear the
way he pulls the art-yard stuff? A year ago he didn't
know one end of a paint brush from the other. He
didn't know he had any nerves. If you had brought
him the artistic temperament on a plate with a bit of
watercress round it, he wouldn't have recognized it.
And now, just because he's got a studio in Washington

100

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Square, he thinks he has a right to be a sort of dope-
less dope fiend, going up in the air if you speak to him
suddenly and running about the place hitting snakes
with teaspoons as if he were Michelangelo !"

"My dear, you do me an injustice. It is true that

as an artist I developed late But why should

we quarrel? If it will help to pave the way to a re-
newed understanding between us, I am prepared to
apologize for striking Clarence. That is conciliatory,
I think, Miss Fenwick?"

"Very."

"Miss Fenwick considers my attitude conciliatory,
my dear."

"It's something,'9 admitted Lady Wetherby grudg-
ingly.

Lord Wetherby drained the highball which Dudley
Pickering had left behind him and seemed to draw
strength from it, for he now struck a firmer note.

"But, though expressing regret for my momentary
loss of self-control, I cannot recede from the position
I have taken up as regards the essential unfitness of
Clarence's presence in the home."

Lady Wetherby looked despairingly at Claire.

"The very first words I heard Algie speak, Claire,
were at Newmarket during the three-o'clock race one
May afternoon. He was hanging over the rail, yelling
like an Indian, and what he was yelling was: 'Come

101

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

on, you blighter, come on! By the living jingo, Brick-
bat wins in a walk !' And now he's pulling stuff about
receding from essential positions ! Oh, well, he wasn't
an artist then!"

"My dear Pau — Polly. I am purposely picking my
words on the present occasion in order to prevent the
possibility of further misunderstandings. I consider
myself an ambassador."

"You would be shocked if you knew what I con-
sider you !"

"I am endeavoring to the best of my ability "

" Algie, listen to me ! I am quite calm at present, but
there's no knowing how soon I may hit you with a chair
if you don't come to earth quick and talk like an ordi-
nary human being. What is it that you are driving at?"

"Very well, it's this: I'll come home if you get rid
of that snake."

"Never!"

"It's surely not much to ask of you, Polly."

"I won't!"

Lord Wetherby sighed.

"When I led you to the altar," he said reproachfully,
"you promised to love, honor and obey me. I thought
at the time it was a bit of swank !"

Lady Wetherby's manner thawed. She became more
friendly.

"When you talk like that, Algie, I feel there's hope
102

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

for you after all. That's how you used to talk in the
dear old days when you'd come to me to borrow half
a crown to put on a horse! You "

This excursion into reminiscence appeared to em-
barrass Lord Wetherby. He indicated Claire with a
gesture.

"My dear!" he said deprecatingly. "Miss Fen-
wick r

"Oh, Claire's an old pal of mine. You can't shock
her. She knows all about us."

"Nevertheless "

"Oh, very well. Listen, Algie, now that you seem
to be getting more reasonable, I wish I could make
you understand that I don't keep Clarence for sheer
love of him. He's a commercial asset. He's an adver-
tisement. You must know that I have got to have
something to "

"I admit that may be so as regards the monkey
Eustace. Monkeys as aids to publicity have, I believe,
been tested and found valuable by other artists. I am
prepared to accept Eustace, but the snake is worth-
less."

"Oh, you don't object to Eustace then?"

"I do strongly, but I concede his uses."

"You would live in the same house as Eustace?"

"I would endeavor to do so. But not in the same
house with Eustace and Clarence."

103

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

There was a pause.

"I don't know that Fm so struck on Clarence my-
self," said Lady Wetherby weakly.

"My darling !"

"Wait a minute. I've not said I would get rid of
him."

"But you will?"

Lady Wetherby's hesitation lasted but a moment.

"All right, Algie. Fll send him to the Bronx Zoo
tomorrow.5'

"My precious pet!"

A hand, reaching under the table, enveloped Claire's
in a loving clasp. From the look on Lord Wetherby's
face she supposed that he was under the delusion that
he was bestowing this attention on his wife.

"You know, Algie, darling," said Lady Wetherby,
melting completely, "when you get that yearning note
in your voice I just flop and take the full count."

"My sweetheart, when I saw you doing that Dream of
What's-the-girl's-bally-naine dance just now, it was all
I could do to keep from rushing out on the floor and
hugging you."

"Algie!"

"Polly !"

"Do you mind letting go of my hand, please, Lord
Wetherby?" said Claire, on whom these saccharine ex-
changes were beginning to have a cloying effect.

104

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

For a moment Lord Wetherby seemed somewhat con-
fused, but, pulling himself together, he covered his em-
barrassment with a pomposity that blended poorly with
his horsey appearance.

<cMarried life, Miss Fenwick," he said, "as you will
no doubt discover some day for yourself, must always
be a series of mutual compromises, of cheerful give and
take. The lamp of love "

His remarks were cut short by a crash at the other
end of the room. There was sharp cry and the splin-
tering of glass. The place was full of a sudden, sharp
confusion. They jumped up with one accord. Lady
Wetherby spilled her iced coffee; Lord Wetherby
dropped the lamp of love. Claire, who was nearest
the pillar that separated them from the part of the
restaurant where the accident had happened, was the
first to see what had taken place.

A large man, dancing with a large girl, appeared to
have charged into a small waiter, upsetting him and
his tray and the contents of his tray. The various
actors in the drama were now engaged in sorting them-
selves out from the ruins. The man had his back
toward her, and it seemed to Claire that there was
something familiar about that back. Then he turned
and she recognized Lord Dawlish.

She stood transfixed. For a moment surprise was
her only emotion. How came Bill to be in America?

105

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Then other feelings blended with her surprise. It is
a fact that Lord Dawlish was looking singularly dis-
reputable. The unwonted exercise of the dance had
flushed his face, rumpled his hair and imparted a damp
untidiness to his collar. He had not yet become aware
that there was a pat of butter clinging to his left shoul-
der, and that did not tend to lessen the dissolute nature
of his appearance.

From Bill Claire's eyes traveled to his partner and
took in with one swift feminine glance her large, ex-
uberant blondness. There is no denying that, seen with
a somewhat biased eye, the Good Sport resembled rather
closely a poster advertising a burlesque show. Claire
returned to her seat. Lord and Lady Wetherby con-
tinued to talk, but she allowed them to conduct the
conversation without her assistance.

"You're very quiet, Claire," said Polly.

"I'm thinking."

"A very good thing, too, so they tell me. Pve never
tried it myself. Algie, darling, he was a bad boy
to leave his nice home, wasn't he? He didn't deserve
to have his hand held."

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

IT had been a great night for Nutty Boyd. If
the vision of his sister Elizabeth, back at the farm,
speculating sadly on the whereabouts of her wander-
ing boy ever came before his mental eye, he certainly
did not allow it to interfere with his appreciation of
the festivities. At Frolics in the Air, whither they
moved after draining Riegelheimer's of what joys it
had to offer, and at Peak's, where they went after
wearying of Frolics in the Air, he was in the highest
spirits. It was only occasionally that the recollection
came to vex him that this could not last, that — since
his Uncle Ira had played him false — he must return
anon to the place whence he had come. When this
happened a moody silence fell upon him ; but he quickly
recovered himself, and played the host again with that
merry absence of parsimony that had endeared him
in the past to so many of Broadway's horse leeches.

Why, in a city of all-night restaurants, these parties
ever break up, one cannot say, but a merciful Provi-
dence sees to it that they do, and just as Lord Daw-
lish was contemplating an eternity of the company of
Nutty and his two companions, the end came. Miss
Leonard said that she was tired. Her friend said that

107

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

it was a shame to go home at dusk like this, but if
the party was going to be broken up, she supposed
there was nothing else for it. Bill was too sleepy to
say anything.

The Good Sport lived round the corner, and only
required Lord Dawlish's escort for a couple of blocks.
But Miss Leonard's hotel was in the neighborhood of
Washington Square, and it was Nutty's pleasing task
to drive her thither. Engaged thus, he received a shock
that electrified him.

"That pal of yours," said Miss Leonard drowsily.
She was half asleep. "What did you say his name
was?"

"Chalmers, he told me. I only met him tonight."

"Well, it isn't, it's something else. It" — Miss Leon-
ard yawned — "it's Lord something."

"How do you mean, Lord something?"

"He's a lord — at least he was when I met him in
London."

"Are you sure you met him in London?"

"Of course I'm sure. He was at that supper Cap-
tain Delaney gave at Oddy's. There can't be two
men in — yeow! — in England who dance like that."

The recollection of Bill's performance stimulated
Miss Leonard into a temporary wakefulness, and she
giggled.

"He danced like one of those college boys bucking
108

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

the center! He danced just the same way that night
in London. I wish I could remember his name. I al-
most had it a dozen times tonight. It's something with
a window in it."

"A window?" Nutty 's brain was a little fatigued,
and he felt himself unequal to grasping this. "How
do you mean, a window?"

"No, not a window, a door! I knew it was some-
thing about a house. I know now, his name's Lord
Dawlish."

Nutty's fatigue fell from him like a garment.

"It can't be!"

"It is."

Miss Leonard's eyes had closed and she spoke in a
muffled voice.

"Are you sure?"

"Mm-mm."

"By gad!"

Nutty was wide awake now and full of inquiries;
but his companion unfortunately was asleep, and he
could not put them to her. A gentleman cannot prod
a lady — and his guest, at that — in the ribs in order
to wake her up and ask her questions. Nutty sat
back and gave himself up to feverish thought.

He could think of no reason why Lord Dawlish
should have come to America calling himself William
Chalmers, but that was no reason why he should not

109

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

have done so. And Daisy Leonard, who all along had
remembered meeting him in London, had identified
him.

Nutty was convinced. Arriving finally at Miss Leon-
ard's hotel, he woke her up and saw her in at the door ;
then, telling the man to drive to Forty-three East
Twenty-seventh Street, he urged his mind to rapid
thought. He had decided as a first step in the follow-
ing up of this matter to invite Bill down to Elizabeth's
farm, and the thought occurred to him that this had
better be done tonight, for he knew by experience that
on the morning after these little jaunts he was seldom
in the mdod to seek people out and invite them to go
anywhere.

All the way to the apartment he continued to think
and it was wonderful what possibilities there seemed
to be in this little scheme of courting the society of
the man who had robbed him of his inheritance. He
had worked on Bill's feelings so successfully as to elicit
a loan of a million dollars, and was just proceeding to
marry him to Elizabeth when the cab stopped with the
sudden sharpness peculiar to New York cabs and he
woke up to find himself at his destination.

Bill was in bed when the bell rang and received his
late host in his pajamas, wondering, as he did so9
whether this was the New York custom, to foregather
again after a party had been broken up and chat till

110

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

breakfast. But Nutty, it seemed, had come with a
motive, not from a desire for more conversation.

"Sorry to disturb you, old man," said Nutty. "I
looked in to tell you that I was going down to the coun-
try tomorrow. I wondered whether you would care
to come and spend a day or two."

Bill was delighted. This was better than he had
hoped for.

"Rather!" he said. "Thanks awfully P'

"There are plenty of trains in the afternoon," said
Nutty. "I don't suppose either of us will feel like
getting up early. I'll call for you here at half-past
six, and we'll have an early dinner and make the seven-
fifteen, shall we? We live very simply, you know. You
won't mind that?"

"My dear chap P'

"That's all right, then," said Nutty, closing the door.
"Good night"

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

ELIZABETH entered Nutty's room and, seating
herself on the bed, surveyed him with a bright,
quiet eye that drilled holes in her brother's uneasy
conscience. This was her second visit to him that
morning. She had come an hour ago, bearing break-
fast on a tray, and had departed without saying a
word. It was this uncanny silence of hers even more
than the effects — which still lingered — of his revels in
the metropolis, that had interfered with Nutty's en-
joyment of the morning meal. Never a hearty break-
faster, he had found himself under the influence of
her wordless disapproval physically unable to consume
the fried egg that confronted him. He had given it
one look, then, indorsing the opinion which he had
once heard a character in a play utter in somewhat
similar circumstances — that there was nothing on earth
so homely as an egg — he had covered it with a hand-
kerchief and tried to pull himself round with hot tea.
He was now smoking a sad cigarette and waiting for
the blow to fall.

Her silence had puzzled him. Though he had tried
to give her no opportunity of getting him alone on
the previous evening when he had arrived at the farm

112

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

with Lord Dawlish, he had fully expected that she
would have broken in upon him with abuse and re-
crimination in the middle of the night. Yet she had
not done this, nor had she spoken to him when bring-
ing him his breakfast. These things found their ex-
planation in Elizabeth's character, with which Nutty,
though he had known her so long, was but imperfect-
ly acquainted. Elizabeth had never been angrier with
her brother, but an innate goodness of heart had
prevented her falling upon him before he had had
rest and refreshment. She wanted to massacre him,
but at the same time she told herself that the
poor dear must be feeling very, very ill and should
have a reasonable respite before the slaughter com-
menced.

It was plain that in her opinion this respite had now
lasted long enough. She looked over her shoulder to
make sure that she had closed the door, then leaned a
little forward and spoke.

"Now, Nutty P

The wretched youth attempted bluster.

"What do you mean— 'Now, Nutty P What's the
use of looking at a fellow like that and saying, 'Now,
Nutty P Where's the sense- "

His voice trailed off. He was not a very intelligent
young man, but even he could see that his was not a
position where righteous indignation could be assumed

118

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

with any solid chance of success. As a substitute he
tried pathos.

"Oo-oo, my head does ache!"

"I wish it would burst," said his sister unkindly.

"That's a nice thing to say to a fellow !"

"I'm sorry. I wouldn't have said it "

"Oh, well!"

"Only I couldn't think of anything worse."

It began to seem to Nutty that pathos was a bit
of a flivver too. As a last resort he fell back on silence.
He wriggled as far down as he could beneath the sheets
and breathed in a soft and wounded sort of way. Eliza-
beth took up the conversation.

"Nutty," she said, "I've struggled for years against
the conviction that you were a perfect idiot. I've
forced myself against -my better judgment to try to
look on you as sane, but now I give in. I can't believe
you are responsible for your actions. Don't imagine
that I am going to heap you with reproaches because
you sneaked off to New York. I'm not even going to
tell you what I thought of you for not sending me a
thirty-cent telegram, letting me know where you were.
I can understand all that. You were disappointed
because Uncle Ira had not left you his money, and I
suppose that was your way of working it off. If you
had just run away and come back again with a head-
ache, I'd have treated you like the Prodigal Son. But

114

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

there are some things which are too much, and bring-
ing a perfect stranger back with you for an indefinite
period is one of them. I'm not saying anything against
Mr. Chalmers personally. I haven't had time to find
out much about him, except that he's an Englishman ;
but he looks respectable. Which, as a friend of yours,
is more or less of a miracle."

She raised her eyebrows, as a faint moan of protest
came from beneath the sheets.

"You surely," she said, "aren't going to suggest at
this hour of the day, Nutty, that your friends aren't
the most horrible set of pests outside a penitentiary?
Not that it's likely after all these months that they
are outside a penitentiary. You know perfectly well
that while you were running round New York you
collected the most pernicious bunch of social gangsters
that ever fastened their talons into a silly child who
ought never to have been allowed out in a big city with-
out his nurse."

After which complicated insult Elizabeth paused for
breath, and there was silence for a space.

"Well, as I was saying, I know nothing against this
Mr. Chalmers. Probably his finger prints are in the
Rogues' Gallery, and he is better known to the police
as Jack the Blood or something, but he hasn't shown
that side of him yet. My point is that, whoever he is,
I do not want him or anybody else coming and taking

115

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

up his abode here while I have to be cook and house-
maid too. I object to having a stranger on the prem-
ises spying out the nakedness of the land. I am sen-
sitive about my honest poverty. So, darling Nutty, my
precious Nutty, you miserable simp, you poor bone-
headed muddler, will you kindly think up at your earli-
est convenience some plan for politely ejecting this
Mr. Chalmers of yours from our humble home, be-
cause if you don't I'm going to have a nervous break-
down."

And, completely restored to good humor by her own
eloquence, Elizabeth burst out laughing. It was a trait
in her character which she had often lamented, that
she could not succeed in keeping angry with anyone
for more than a few minutes on end. Sooner or later
some happy selection of a phrase of abuse would tickle
her sense of humor, or the appearance of her victim
would become too funny not to be laughed at. On
the present occasion it was the ridiculous spectacle
of Nutty cowering beneath the bedclothes that caused
her wrath to evaporate. She made a weak attempt
to recover it. She glared at Nutty, who at the sound
of her laughter had emerged from under the clothes
like a worm after a thunderstorm.

"I mean it," she said. "It really is too bad of you!
You might have had some sense and a little considera-
tion. Ask yourself if we are in a position here to en-

116

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

tertain visitors. WeD, I'm going to make myself very
unpopular with this Mr. Chalmers of yours. By this
evening he will be regarding me with utter loathing,
for I am about to persecute him."

"What do you mean?" asked Nutty, alarmed.

"I am going to begin by asking him to help me open
one of the hives."

f*For heaven's sake !"

"After that I shall — with his assistance — transfer
some honey. And after that — well, I don't suppose
he will be alive by then. If he is I shall make him wash
the dishes for me. The least he can do, after swoop-
ing down on us like this, is to make himself useful"

A cry of protest broke from the appalled Nutty, but
Elizabeth did not hear it. She had left the room and
was on her way downstairs.

Lord Dawlish was smoking an after-breakfast cigar
in the grounds. It was a beautiful day, and a peaceful
happiness had come upon him. He told himself that
he had made progress. He was under the same roof
as the girl he had deprived of her inheritance, and it
should be simple to establish such friendly relations
as would enable him to reveal his identity and ask her
to reconsider her refusal to relieve him of a just share
of her uncle's money. He had seen Elizabeth for only
a short time on the previous night, but he had taken
an immediate liking to her. There was something about

117

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

the American girl, he reflected, which seemed to put a
man at his ease, a charm and directness all her own.
Yes, he liked Elizabeth, and he liked this dwelling
place of hers* He was quite willing to stay on here
indefinitely.

Nature had done well by Flack's. The house itself
was an ordinary frame house, more pleasing to the
eye than most of the houses in those parts, owing to
the black and white paint which decorated it and an
unconventional flattening and rounding of the roof.
But Nature had made sd many improvements that the
general effect was unusually delightful. From where
Bill stood linden trees, chestnut trees, locust trees and
a solitary blue fir, the aristocrat of the garden, met his
eye. The porch that ran round two sides of the house
was almost hidden by masses of roses of Sharon. There
were hydrangeas on the turf beyond the sandy drive,
and more roses. To the left, shaded by a little regi-
ment of apple trees, stood the beehives. The sun
shone, a gentle breeze blew up from the bay, and the
air was full of the soothing murmur of bees and the
cheerful gossiping of crickets. Assuredly the lines were
fallen unto him in pleasant places.

He perceived Elizabeth coming toward him from the
house. He threw away his cigar and went to meet her.
Seen by daylight she was more attractive than ever.
She looked so small and neat and wholesome, so ex-

118

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

tremely unlike Miss Daisy Leonard's friend. And such
was the reaction from what might be termed his later
Riegelheimer's mood, that if he had been asked to define
feminine charm in a few words, he would have replied
without hesitation that it was the quality of being as
different as possible in every way from the Good Sport.
Elizabeth fulfilled this qualification. She was not only
small and neat, but she had a soft voice to which it was
a joy to listen.

"I was just admiring your place," he said.

"Its appearance is the best part of it," said Eliza-
beth. "It is a deceptive place. The bay looks beau-
tiful, but you can't bathe in it because of the jellyfish.
The woods are lovely, but you daren't go near them
because of the ticks."

"Ticks?"

"They jump on you and suck your blood," said Eliz-
abeth carelessly. "And the nights are gorgeous, but
you have to stay indoors after dusk because of the
mosquitoes." She paused to mark the effect of these
horrors on her visitor. "And then, of course," she
went on, as he showed no signs of flying to the house
to pack his bag and catch the next train, "the bees are
always stinging you. I hope you are not afraid of bees,
Mr. Chalmers?"

"Rather not. Jolly little chaps !"

A gleam appeared in Elizabeth's eye.
119

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"If you are so fond of them perhaps you wouldn't
mind coming and helping me open one of the hives?"

"Rather!"

"Ill go and fetch the things."

She went into the house and ran up to Nutty's room,
waking that sufferer from a troubled sleep.

"Nutty, he's bitten."

Nutty sat up violently.

"Good Lord; what by?"

"You don't understand. What I meant was that I
invited your Mr. Chalmers to help me open a hive, and
he said 'Rather !' and is waiting to do it now. Be ready
to say good-by to him. If he comes out of this alive
his first act, after bathing the wounds with ammonia,
will be to leave us forever."

"But look here, he's a visitor "

"Cheer up ! He won't be much longer."

"You can't let him in for a ghastly thing like opening
a hive. When you made me do it that time I was pick-
ing stings out of myself for a week."

"That was because you had been smoking. Bees dis-
like the smell of tobacco."

"But this fellow may have been smoking."

"He has just finished a strong cigar."

"For heaven's sake P'

"Good-by, Nutty, dear, I mustn't keep him waiting."

Lord Dawlish looked with interest at the various im-
120

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

piemen ts which she had collected when she rejoined him
outside. He relieved her of the stool, the smoker, the
cotton waste, the knife, the screw driver and the queen-
clipping cage.

"Let me carry these for you," he said, "unless you've
hired a van."

Elizabeth disapproved of this flippancy. It was out
of place in one who should have been trembling at the
prospect of doom. She threw her mind back to the first
occasion on which she had opened a hive. Only a firm
conviction that the bee-moth had been at work inside it
had given her the courage to go through the ordeal.
She could still recall the sensations attendant on taking
out her first brood frame.

"Don't you wear a veil for this sort of job?"

As a rule Elizabeth did. She had reached a stage of
intimacy with her bees which rendered a veil a super-
fluous precaution, but until today she had never aban-
doned it. Her view of the matter was that, though the
inhabitants of the hives were familiar and friendly with
her by this time and recognized that she came among
them without hostile intent, it might well happen that
among so many thousands there might be one slow-
witted enough and obtuse enough not to have grasped
this fact. And in such an event a veil was better than '
any amount of explanations, for you cannot stick to
pure reason when quarreling with bees. But today it

121

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

had struck her that she could hardly protect herself in
this way without offering a similar safeguard to her
visitor and she had no wish to hedge him about with
safeguards.

"Oh, no," she said brightly; "I'm not afraid of a few
bees. Are you?"

"Rather not!"

"You know what to do if one of them flies at
you?"

"Well, it would anyway, what? What I mean to say
is, I could leave most of the doing to the bee."

Elizabeth was more disapproving than ever. This
was mere bravado. She did not speak again until they
reached the hives.

In the neighborhood of the hives a vast activity pre-
vailed. What, heard from afar, had been a pleasant
murmur became at close quarters a menacing tumult.
The air was full of bees — bees sallying forth for honey,
bees returning with honey, bees trampling on each
other's heels, bees pausing in mid-air to pass the time of
day with rivals on competing lines of traffic. Blunt-
bodied drones whizzed to and fro with & noise like mini-
ature high-powered automobiles, as if anxious to con-
vey the idea of being tremendously busy without going
to the length of doing any actual work. One of these
blundered into Lord Dawlish's face, and it pleased Eliz-
abeth to observe that he gave a jump.

122

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Don't be afraid," she said, "it's only a drone.
Drones have no stings."

"They have hard heads though. Here he comes
again!"

"I suppose he smells your tobacco. A drone has
thirty-seven thousand eight hundred nostrils, you
know."

"That gives him a sporting chance of smelling a fif-
teen-cent cigar, what? I mean to say, if he misses with
eight hundred of his nostrils he's apt to get it with the
other thirty-seven thousand."

Elizabeth was feeling annoyed with her bees. They
resolutely declined to sting this young man. Bees flew
past him, bees flew into him, bees settled upon his coat,
bees paused questioningly in front of him, as who should
say, "What have we here?" but not a single bee mo-
lested him. Yet when Nutty, poor darling, went within
a dozen yards of the hives he never failed to suffer for
it. In her heart Elizabeth knew perfectly well that this
was because Nutty, when in the presence of the bees,
lost his head completely and behaved like an exagger-
ated version of Lady Wetherby's Dream of Psyche,
whereas Bill maintained an easy calm ; but at the mo-
ment she put the phenomenon down to that inexplicable
cussedness which does so much to exasperate the hu-
man race, and it fed her annoyance with her unbidden
guest.

123

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Without commenting on his last remark she took the
smoker from him and set to work. She inserted in the
fire chamber a handful of the cotton waste and set fire
to it ; then with a preliminary puff or two of the bellows
to make sure that the conflagration had not gone out,
she aimed the nozzle at the front door of the hive.

The results were instantaneous. One or two bee
policemen, who were doing fixed-post duty near the
opening, scuttled hastily back into the hive ; and from
within came a muffled buzzing as other bees, all talking
at once, worried the perplexed officials with foolish
questions, a buzzing that became less muffled and more
pronounced as Elizabeth lifted the edge of the coyer
and directed more smoke through the crack. This done,
she removed the cover, set it down on the grass beside
her, lifted the supercover and applied more smoke, and
raised her eyes to where Bill stood watching. His face
wore a smile of pleased interest.

Elizabeth's irritation became painful. She resented
his smile. Nutty, on the famous occasion when she had
induced him to help her open a hive, had wabbled with
pure terror. She hung the smoker on the side of the
hive.

"The stool, please, and the screw driver ."

She seated herself beside the hive and began to loosen
the outside section. Then taking the brood frame by
the projecting ends she pulled it out and handed it to

134

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

her companion. She did it as one who plays an ace of
trumps.

"Would you mind holding this, Mr. Chalmers?"

This was the point in the ceremony at which the
wretched Nutty had broken down absolutely, and not
inexcusably, considering the severity of the test. The
surface of the frame was black with what appeared at
first sight to be a thick, bubbling fluid of some sort,
pouring viscously to and fro as if some hidden fire had
been lighted beneath it. Only after a closer inspection
was it apparent to the lay eye that this seeming fluid
was in reality composed of mass upon mass of bees.
They shoved and writhed and muttered and jostled, for
all the world like a collection of home-seeking New
Yorkers trying to secure standing room on a subway
express at half-past five in the afternoon.

Nutty, making this discovery, had emitted one wild
yell, dropped the frame, and started at full speed for
the house, his retreat expedited by repeated stings from
the nervous bees. Bill, more prudent, remained abso-
lutely motionless. He eyed the seething frame with in-
terest but without apparent panic.

"I want you to help me here, Mr. Chalmers. You
have stronger wrists than I have. I will tell you what
to do. Hold the frame tightly "

"I've got it."

"Jerk it down as sharply as you can to within a few
135

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

inches of the door, and then jerk it up again. You see
that shakes them off."

"It would me," agreed Bill cordially, "if I were a
bee."

Elizabeth had the feeling that she had played her ace
of trumps and by some miracle lost the trick. If this
grisly operation did not daunt the man, nothing, not
even the transferring of honey, would. She watched
him as he raised the frame and jerked it down with a
strong swiftness which her less powerful wrists had
never been able to achieve. The bees tumbled off in a
dense shower, asking questions to the last, then sighting
the familiar entrance to the hive they bustled in with-
out waiting to investigate the cause of the earth-
quake.

Lord Dawlish watched them go with a kindly interest.

"It has always been a mystery to me," he said, "why
they never seem to think of manhandling the Johnny
who does that to them. They don't seem able to con-
nect cause and effect. I suppose the only way they can
figure it out is that the bottom has suddenly dropped
out of everything, and they are so busy lighting out for
home that they haven't time to go to the root of things.
But it's a ticklish job for all that, if you're not used to
it. I know when I first did it I shut my eyes and won-
dered whether they would bury my remains or cremate
them."

1*6

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

"He eyed the seething frame with interest but without

apparent panic." /Js^11^

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"When you first did it?" Elizabeth was staring at
him blankly. "Have you done it before?"

Her voice shook. Bill met her gaze frankly.

"Done it before? Rather! Thousands of times.
You see, I spent a year on a bee farm once, learning
the business."

For a moment mortification was the only emotion of
which Elizabeth was conscious. She felt supremely
ridiculous. For this she had schemed and plotted — to
give a practiced expert the opportunity of doing what
he had done a thousand times before !

And then her mood changed in a flash. Nature has
decreed that there are certain things in life which shall
act as hoops of steel, grappling the souls of the elect
together. Golf is one of these ; a mutual love of horse-
flesh another ; but the greatest of all is bees. Between
two beekeepers there can be no strife. Not even a tepid
hostility can mar their perfect communion. The petty
enmities which life raises to be barriers between man
and man and between man and woman vanish, once it
is revealed to them that they are linked by this great
bond. Envy, malice, hatred and all uncharitableness
disappear, and they look into each other's eyes and say
"My brother !"

The effect of Bill's words on Elizabeth was revolu-
tionary. They crashed through her dislike, scattering
it like an explosive shelL She had resented this golden

1*7

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

young man's presence at the farm. She had thought
him in the way. She had objected to his becoming
aware that she did such prosaic tasks as cooking and
washing up. But now her whole attitude toward him
was changed. He could stay there as long as he liked,
the longer the better.

"You have really kept bees?"

"Not actually kept them, worse luck ; I couldn't raise
the capital. You see, money was a bit tight "

"I know," said Elizabeth sympathetically. "Money
is like that, isn't it?"

"The general impression seemed to be that I should
be foolish to try anything so speculative as beekeeping,
so it fell through. Some very decent old boys got me
another job."

"What job?"

"Secretary of a club."

"In London, of course ?"

"Yes."

"And all the time you wanted to be in the country
keeping bees !"

Elizabeth could hardly control her voice, her pity
was so great.

"I should have liked it," said Bill wistfully. "Lon-
don's all right, but I love the country. My ambition
would be to have a whacking big farm, a sort of ranch

miles away from anywhere "

1»8

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

He broke off. This was not the first time he had
caught himself forgetting how his circumstances had
changed in the past two weeks. It was ridiculous to be
telling hard-luck stories about not being able to buy a
farm, when he had the wherewithal to buy dozens of
farms. It took a lot of getting used to, this business of
being a millionaire.

"That's my ambition too," said Elizabeth eagerly.
This was the very first time she had met a congenial
spirit. Nutty's views on farming and the Arcadian life
generally were saddening to an enthusiast. "If I had
the money I should get an enormous farm, and in the
summer I should go through the East Side and borrow
all the children I could find there, and take them out to
it and let them wallow in it."

"Wouldn't they do a lot of damage?"

"I shouldn't mind. I should be too rich to worry
about the damage. If they ruined the place beyond
repair I'd go and buy another." She laughed. "It
isn't so impossible as it sounds. I came very near be-
ing able to do it." She paused for a moment, but went
on almost at once. After all, if you cannot confide your
intimate troubles to a fellow bee-lover to whom can you
confide them? "An uncle of mine "

But felt himself flushing! He looked away from
her.

He had a sense of almost unbearable guilt, as if he
1*9

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

had just done some particularly low crime and was
contemplating another.

"An uncle of mine would have left me enough money
to buy all the farms I wanted, only an awful per-
son— an English lord — I wonder if you have heard
of him? — Lord Dawlish — got hold of uncle somehow
and induced him to make a will leaving all the money
to him/*

She looked at Bill for sympathy, and was touched to
see that he was crimson with emotion. He must be a
perfect dear to take other people's misfortunes to heart
like that.

"I don't know how he managed it," she went on.
"He must have worked and plotted and schemed, for
Uncle Ira wasn't a weak sort, of man whom you could
do what you liked with. He was very obstinate. But
anyway this Lord Dawlish succeeded in doing it some-
how, and then" — her eyes blazed at the recollection —
"he had the insolence to write to me through his law-
yers, offering me half. I suppose he was hoping to
satisfy his conscience. Naturally I refused it."

"But— but— but why ?"

"Why! Why did I refuse it? Surely you don't
think I was going to accept charity from the man who
had cheated me?"

"But — but perhaps he didn't mean it like that.
What I mean to say is — as charity, you know."

130

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"He did! But don't let's talk of it any more. It
makes me angry to think of him, and there's no use
spoiling a lovely day like this by getting angry."

Bill sighed. He had never dreamed before that it
could be so difficult to give money away. He was pro-
foundly glad that he had not revealed his identity, as
he had been on the very point of doing just when she
began her remarks. He understood now why that curt
refusal had come in answer to his lawyer's letter. Well,
there was nothing to be done, nothing but wait and hope
that time might accomplish something.

"What do you want me to do next?" he said. "Why
did you open the hive? Did you want to take a look
at the queen?"

Elizabeth hesitated. She blushed with pure shame.
She had had but one motive in opening the hive, and
that had been to annoy him. She scorned to take ad-
vantage of the loophole he had provided. Beekeeping
is a free-masonry. A beekeeper cannot deceive a
brother mason.

She faced him bravely.

"I didn't want to take a look at anything, Mr.
Chalmers. I opened that hive because I wanted you to
drop the frame, as my brother did, and get stung, as
he was ; because I thought that would drive you away,
because I thought then that I didn't want you down
here. Fm ashamed of myself, and I don't know where

131

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money,

I'm getting the nerve to tell you this. I hope you will
stay on — on and on and on."

Bill was aghast.

"Good Lord ! If I'm in the way "

"You aren't in the way."

"But you said *

"But don't you see that it's so different now? I
didn't know then that you were fond of bees. You must
stay, if my telling you hasn't made you feel that you
want to catch the next train. You will save our lives —
mine and Nutty's too. Oh dear, you're hesitating!
You're trying to think up some polite way of getting
out of the place ! You mustn't go, Mr. Chalmers ; you
simply must stay. There aren't any mosquitoes, no
jellyfish — nothing! At least there are, but what do
they matter? You don't mind them. Do you play
golf?"

"Yes."

"There are links here. You can't go until you've
tried them. What is your handicap?"

"Plus two."

"So is mine."

"By Jove! Really?"

Elizabeth looked at him, her eyes dancing.

"Why, we're practically twin souls, Mr. Chalmers!
Tell me ! I know your game is nearly perfect, but if you
have a fault, is it a tendency to putt too hard?"

13*

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Why, by Jove, yes, it is !"

"I knew it. Something told me. It's the curse of
my life too ! Well, after that you can't go away."

"But if I'm in the way "

"In the way! Mr. Chalmers, will you come in now
and help me wash the breakfast things?"

"Rather P' said Lord Dawlish.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

IN the clays that followed their interrupted love
icene at Riegelheimer's Restaurant that night of
Lord Dawlish's unfortunate encounter with the tray-
bearing waiter, Dudley Pickering's behavior had per-
plexed Claire Fenwick. She had taken it for granted
that next day at the latest he would resume the offer of
his hand, heart and automobiles. But time passed and
he made no move in that direction. Of limousine bodies,
carburetors, spark plugs and inner tubes he spoke with
freedom and eloquence, but the subject of love and
marriage he avoided absolutely. His behavior was
inexplicable.

Claire was piqued. She was in the position of a
hostess who has swept and garnished her house against
the coming of a guest and waits in vain for that guest's
arrival. She had made up her mind what to do when
Dudley Pickering proposed to her next time, and there-
by, it seemed to her, had removed all difficulties in the
way of that proposal. She little knew her Pickering.

Dudley Pickering was not a self-starter in the motor-
drome of love. He needed cranking. He was that most
unpromising of matrimonial material, a shy man with
a cautious disposition. If he overcame his shyness

184

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

caution applied the foot brake. If he succeeded in for-
getting caution shyness shut off the gas. At Riegel-
heimer's some miracle had made him not only reckless
but unselfconscious. Possibly the Dream of Psyche
had gone to his head. At any rate he had been on the
very verge of proposing to Claire when the interruption
had occurred, and in bed that night, reviewing the
affair, he had been appalled at the narrowness of his
escape from taking a definite step. Except in the way
of business he was a man who hated definite steps. He
never accepted even a dinner invitation without subse-
quent doubts and remorse. The consequence was that
in the days that followed the Riegelheimer episode, what
Lord Wetherby would have called the lamp of love
burned rather low in Mr. Pickering, as if the acetylene
were running out. He still admired Claire intensely
and experienced disturbing emotions when he beheld
her perfect tonneau and wonderful headlights ; but he
regarded her with a cautious fear. Although he some-
times dreamed sentimentally of marriage in the ab-
stract, of actual marriage, of marriage with a flesh-
and-blood individual, of marriage that involved clergy-
men and Voices that Breathe O'er Eden and giggling
bridesmaids and cake, Dudley Pickering was afraid with
a terror that woke him sweating in the night. His
shyness shrank from the ceremony, his caution jibbed
at the mysteries of married life. So his attitude to-

135

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

ward Claire, the only girl who had succeeded in be-
witching him into the opening words of an actual pro-
posed, was a little less cordial and affectionate than
if she had been a rival automobile manufacturer.

Matters were in this state when Lady Wetherby,
who having danced classical dances for three months
without a break required a rest, shifted her camp to
the house which she had rented for the summer at
Brookport, Long Island, taking with her Algie, her
husband, the monkey Eustace, and Claire and Mr. Pick-
ering, her guests. The house was a large one, ca-
pable of receiving a big party, but she did not wish
to entertain on an ambitious scale. The only other
guest she proposed to put up was Roscoe Sherriff, her
press agent, who was to come down as soon as he
could get away from his metropolitan duties.

It was a pleasant and romantic place, the estate
which Lady Wetherby had rented. Standing on a hill
the house looked down through green trees on the
gleaming waters of the bay. Smooth lawns and shady
walks it had, and rustic seats beneath spreading cedars.
Yet for all its effect on Dudley Pickering it might have
been a gas works. He roamed the smooth lawns with
Claire, and sat with her on the rustic benches and
talked guardedly of lubricating oil. There were mo-
ments when Claire was almost impelled to forfeit what-
ever chance she might have had of becoming mistress

186

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

of thirty million dollars and a flourishing business
for the satisfaction of administering jilst one whole-
hearted slap on his round and thinly covered head.

And then Roscoe Sherriff came down, and Dudley
Pickering, who for days had been using all his reso-
lution to struggle against the siren, suddenly found
that there was no siren to struggle against. No sooner
had the press agent appeared than Claire deserted
him shamelessly and absolutely. She walked with Ros-
coe Sherriff. Mr. Pickering experienced the discom-
fiting emotions of the man who pushes violently against
an abruptly yielding door, or treads heavily on the
top stair where there is no top stair. He was shaken,
and the clamlike stolidity which he had assumed as
protection gave way.

He hated Roscoe Sherriff. It was unreasonable of
him, seeing that the other had resetted him from the
company of Claire; but it was one of the incongruities
which make human nature the diverting thing it is,
that a stout, middle-aged man, who does not wish to
marry a beautiful girl himself, may seethe with jealous
fury at the spectacle of this same beautiful girl reveling
in the society of a young, slim man with hypnotic eyes
and a cooing voice. Roscoe Sherriff had these advan-
tages. A press agent has to have them in order to
get free advertising past suspicious editors. Circum-
stances had molded Roscoe Sherriff into the livest

137

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

press agent in New York, but Nature had intended him
for the barytone hero of a musical comedy, one of
those debonair young fellows who curvet down to the
footlights in beautifully fitting trousers when the guests
cry: "Why, here comes Jack himself! Hurrah !" At
Lady Wetherby's country house he was what is tech-
nically known as the life and the soul of the party,
and Dudley Pickering hated him bitterly.

Night had descended upon Brookport. Eustace, the
monkey, was in his little bed; Lord Wetherby in the
smoking-room. It was Sunday, the day of rest. Din-
ner was over, and the remainder of the party were
gathered in the drawing-room, with the exception of
Mr. Pickering, who was smoking a cigar on the porch.
A full moon turned Long Island into a fairyland.

Gloom had settled upon Dudley Pickering and he
smoked sadly. All rather stout automobile manufac-
turers are sad when there is a full moon. It makes
them feel lonely. It stirs their hearts to thoughts of
love. Marriage loses its terrors for them, and they
think wistfully of hooking some fair woman up the
back and buying her hats. Such was the mood of Mr.
Pickering, when through the dimness of the porch there
appeared a white shape, moving softly toward them.

"Is that you, Mr. Pickering?"

Claire dropped into the seat beside him. From the
drawing-room came the soft tinkle of a piano. The

138

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

sound blended harmoniously with the quiet peace of
the night. Mr. Pickering let his cigar go out and
clutched the sides of his chair.

"OiTl — er — sing thee saw-ongs ov Arrabee,
Und — ah ta-ales of f arrr Cash-mee-eere,
Wi-ild tales to che-eat thee ovasigh
Und charrrrm thee to-oo a tear-er."

Claire gave a little sigh.

"What a beautiful voice Mr. Sherriff has !"

Dudley Pickering made no reply. He thought Ros-
coe Sherriff had a beastly voice. He resented Roscoe
SherrifPs voice. He objected to Roscoe SherrifFs pol-
luting this fair night with his cacophony.

"Don't you think so, Mr. Pickering?"

"Uh-huh."

"That doesn't sound very enthusiastic. Mr. Pick-
ering, I want you to tell me something. Have I done
anything to offend you?"

Mr. Pickering started violently.

"Eh?"

"I have seen so little of you these last few days.
A little while ago we were always together, having such
interesting talks. But lately it has seemed to me that
you have been avoiding me."

A feeling of helplessness swept over Mr. Pickering.
He was vaguely conscious of a sense of being treated

189

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

unjustly, of there being a flaw in Claire's words some-
where if he could only find it, but the sudden attack
had deprived him of the free and unfettered use of
his powers of reasoning. He gurgled wordlessly, and
Claire went on, her low, sad voice mingling with the
moonlight in a manner that caused thrills to run up
and down his spine. He felt paralyzed. Caution urged
him to make some excuse and follow it with a bolt to
the drawing-room, but he was physically incapable
of taking the excellent advice* Sometimes when you
are out in your Pickering Gem or your Pickering Giant
the car hesitates, falters and stops dead, and your
chauffeur, having examined the carburetor, turns to
you and explains the phenomenon in these words : "The
mixture is too rich." So was it with Mr. Pickering now.
The moonlight alone might not have held him ; Claire's
voice alone might not have held him; but against the
two combined he was powerless. The mixture was too
rich. He sat and breathed a little stertorously, and
there came to him that conviction that comes to all
of us now and then, that we are at a crisis of our ca-
reers and that the moment through which we are living
is a moment big with fate.

The voice in the drawing-room stopped. Having
sung songs of Araby and tales of far Cashmere, Mr.
Roseoe Sherriff was refreshing himself with the colored
comic supplement of the Sunday paper. But Lady

140

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Wetherby, seated at the piano, still touched the keys
softly, and the sound increased the richness of the
mixture which choked Dudley Pickering's spiritual car-
buretor. It is not fair that a rather stout manufac-
turer of automobiles should be called upon to sit in
the moonlight while a beautiful girl, to the accom-
paniment of soft music, reproaches him with having
avoided her.

"I should be so sorry, Mr. Pickering, if I had done
anything to make a difference between us n

"Gukl" said Mr. Pickering.

"I have so few real friends over here.*

"Gukr

Claire's voice trembled.

"I — I get a little lonely, a little homesick some-
times "

She paused, musing, and a spasm of pity rent the
bosom beneath Dudley Pickering's ample shirt. Claire
suddenly became to him a figure of pathos to be com-
pared with Ruth:

When sick for home
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.

There was a buzzing in his ears and a lump choked
his throat.

"Of course I am loving the life here. I think Amer-
141

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

ica's wonderful, and nobody could be kinder than Lady
Wetherby. But — I miss my home. It's the first time
I have been away for so long. I feel very far away
sometimes. There are only three of us at home,
my mother, myself, and my little brother — little
Percy."

Her voice trembled again as she spoke the last two
words, and it was possibly this that caused Mr. Pick-
ering to visualize Percy as a sort of Little Lord Faunt-
leroy, his favorite character in English literature. He
had a vision of a small, delicate, wistful child pining
away for his absent sister. Consumptive probably.
Or curvature of the spine.

He found Claire's hand in his. He supposed dully
he must have reached out for it. Soft and warm it
lay there, while the universe paused breathlessly. And
then from the semidarkness beside him there came the
sound of a stifled sob, and his fingers closed as if some-
one had touched a button.

"Guk!" he said softly.

"We have always been such chums. He is only
ten — such a dear boy. He must be missing me "

She stopped, and simultaneously Dudley Pickering
began to speak.

There is this to be said for your shy, cautious man,
that on the rare occasions when he does tap the vein
of eloquence that vein becomes a geyser. For sev-

148

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

eral minutes Dudley Pickering spouted verbiage like
an Old Faithful. It was >as if after years of silence
and monosyllables he was endeavoring to restore the
average.

He began by touching on his alleged neglect and
avoidance of Claire. He called himself names and more
names. He plumbed the depths of repentance and re-
morse. Proceeding from this, he eulogized her cour-
age, the pluck with which she presented a smiling
face to the world while tortured inwardly by separa-
tion from her little brother Percy. He then turned
to his own feelings.

But there are some things which the historian should
hold sacred, some things which he should look on as
proscribed material for his pen, and the actual words
of a stout manufacturer of automobiles, proposing
marriage in the moonlight, fall into this class. It is
enough to say that Dudley Pickering was definite.
He left no room for doubt as to his meaning.

"Dudley P

She was in his arms. He was embracing her. She
was his — the latest model, self-starting, with limousine
body and all the newest. No, no, his mind was wan-
dering. She was his, this divine girl, this queen among
women, this

From the drawing-room Roscoe SherrifTs voice
floated out in unconscious comment;

143

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Good-by, boys !

I'm going to be married to-morrow.
Good-by, boys!

I'm going from sunshine to sorrow.
No more sitting up till broad daylight."

Did a momentary chill cool the intensity of Dudley
Pickering's ardor? If so he overcame it instantly. He
despised Roscoe Sherriff. He flattered himself that
he had shown Roscoe Sherriff pretty well who was who
and what was what.

They would have a wonderful wedding — dozens of
clergymen, scores of organs playing "The Voice That
Breathed O'er Eden," platoons of bridesmaids, wagon-
loads of cake. And then they would go back to De-
troit and live happy ever after. And it might be that
in time to come there would be given to them little
runabouts.

"I'm going to a life
Of misery and strife,
So good-by, boys !"

Hang Roscoe Sherriff! What did he know about it,
confound him! Dudley Pickering turned a deaf ear
to the song and wallowed in his happiness.

Claire walked slowly down the moonlit drive. She
had removed herself from her Dudley's embraces, for
she wished to be alone, to think. The engagement had

144

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

been announced. All that part of it was over — Dud-
ley's stammering speech, the unrestrained delight of
Polly Wetherby, the facetious rendering of "The Wed-
ding Glide" on the piano by Roscoe Sherriff, and it
now remained for her to try to discover a way of
conveying the news to Bill. It had just struck her that,
though she knew that Bill was in America, she had not
his address.

What was she to do? She must tell him. Other-
wise it might quite easily happen that they might meet
in New York when she returned there. She pictured
the scene. She saw herself walking with Dudley Pick-
ering. Along came Bill. Claire, darling! . • • Heav-
ens, what would Dudley think? It would be too awful!
She couldn't explain. No, somehow or other, even if
she put detectives on his trail, she must find him, and
be off with the old love now that she was on with
the new.

She reached the gate and leaned over it. And as
she did so someone in the shadow of a tall tree spoke
her name. A man came into the light and she saw that
it was Lord Dawlish.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

LORD DAWLISH had gone for a moonlight walk
that night because, like Claire, he wished to be
alone to think. He had fallen with a pleasant ease and
smoothness into the rather curious life lived at Eliza-
beth Boyd's bee farm. A liking for picnics had lingered
in him from boyhood, and existence at Flack's was
one prolonged picnic. He found that he had a natural
aptitude for the more muscular domestic duties, and
his energy in this direction enchanted Nutty, who be-
fore his advent had had a monopoly of these tasks.

Nor was this the only aspect of the situation that
pleased Nutty. When he had invited Bill to the farm
he had had a vague hope that good might come of
it, but he had never dreamed that things would turn
out as well as they promised to do, or that such a
warm and immediate friendship would spring up be-
tween his sister and the man who had diverted the fam-
ily fortune into his own pocket. Bill and Elizabeth
were getting on splendidly. They were together all
the time — walking, golfing, attending to the numerous
needs of the bees or sitting on the porch. Nutty's
imagination began to run away with him. He seemed
to smell the scent of orange blossoms, to hear the joy-

146

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

ous pealing of church bells — in fact, with the differ-
ence that it was not his own wedding that he was
anticipating, he had begun to take very much the
same view of the future that was about to come to Dud-
ley Pickering.

Elizabeth would have been startled and embarrassed
if she could have read his thoughts, for they might
have suggested to her that she was becoming a great
deal fonder of Bill than the shortness of their acquaint-
ance warranted. But though she did not fail to ob-
serve the strangeness of her brother's manner, she traced
it to another source than the real one. She looked on
it as a manifestation of disordered nerves. Nutty
had a habit of starting back and removing himself
when, entering the porch, he perceived that Bill and
his sister were already seated there. His own impres-
sion on such occasions was that he was behaving with
consummate tact. Elizabeth supposed that he had had
some sort of a spasm.

Lord Dawlish, if he had been able to diagnose cor-
rectly the almost paternal attitude which had become
his host's normal manner these days, would have been
ecjually embarrassed but less startled, for conscience
had already suggested to him from time to time that
he had been guilty of a feeling toward Elizabeth warmer
than any feeling that should come to an engaged man.
Lying in bed at the end of his first week at the farm

147

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

he reviewed the progress of his friendship with her, and
was amazed at the rapidity with which it had grown.

He could not conceal it from himself — Elizabeth ap-
pealed to him. Being built on a large scale himself,
he had always been attracted by small women. There
was a smallness, a daintiness, a liveliness about Eliza-
beth that was almost irresistible. She was so capable,
so cheerful in spite of the fact that she was having
a hard time. And then their minds seemed to blend so
remarkably. There were no odd corners to be smoothed
away. Never in his life had he felt so supremely at
his ease with one of the opposite sex. He loved Claire
— he drove that fact home almost angrily to himself
— but he was forced to admit that he had always been
aware of something in the nature of a barrier between
them. Claire was querulous at times, and always a
little too apt to take offense. He had never been able
to talk to her with that easy freedom that Elizabeth
invited. Talking to Elizabeth was like talking to an
attractive version of oneself. It was a thing to be
done with perfect confidence, without any of that appre-
hension which Claire inspired lest the next remark
might prove the spark to cause an explosion. But
Claire was the girl he loved, there must be no mistake
about that.

He came to the conclusion that the key to the situa-
tion was the fact that Elizabeth was American. He

148

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

had read so much of the American girl, her unaffect-
edness, her genius for easy comradeship. Well, this
must be what the writer fellows meant. He had hap-
pened upon one of those delightful friendships without
any suspicion of sex in them, of which the American
girl had the monopoly. Yes, that must be it. It was
a comforting explanation. It accounted for his feel-
ing at a loose end whenever he was away from Eliza-
beth for as much as half an hour. It accounted for
the fact that they understood each other so well. It
accounted for everything so satisfactorily that he was
able to get to sleep that night after alL

But next morning — for his conscience was one of
those persistent consciences — he began to have doubts
again. Nothing clings like a suspicion in the mind of
a conscientious young man that he has been allowing
his heart to stray from its proper anchorage. Could
it be that he was behaving badly toward Claire? The
thought was unpleasant, but he could not get rid of
it. He extracted Claire's photograph from his suit-
case and gazed solemnly upon it.

At first he was shocked to find that it only succeeded
in convincing him that Elizabeth was quite the most
attractive girl he ever had met. The photographer had
given Claire rather a severe look. He had told her
to moisten the lips with the tip of the tongue and
assume a pleasant smile, with the result that she seemed

149

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

to glare. She had a rather markedly aggressive look,
queenly perhaps, but not very comfortable.

But there is no species of self-hypnotism equal to
that of a man who gazes persistently at a photograph
with the preconceived idea that he is in love with the
original of it. Little by little Bill found that the
old feeling began to return. He persevered. By the
end of a quarter of an hour he had almost succeeded
in capturing anew that first, fine, careless rapture which,
six months ago, had caused him to propose to Claire
and walk on air when she accepted him.

He continued the treatment throughout the day, and
by dinner time had arranged everything with his con-
science in the most satisfactory manner possible. He
loved Claire with a passionate fervor; he liked Eliza-
beth very much indeed. He submitted this diagnosis to
conscience, and conscience graciously approved and
accepted it.

It was Sunday that day. That helped. There is
nothing like Sunday in a foreign country for helping
a man to sentimental thoughts of the girl he has left
behind him elsewhere. And the fact that there was a
full moon clinched it. Bill was enabled to go for an
after-dinner stroll in a condition of almost painful
loyalty to Claire.

From time to time, as he walked along the road, he
took out the photograph and did some more gazing.

150

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

The last occasion on which he did this was just as
he emerged from the shadow of a large tree that stood
by the roadside, and a gush of rich emotion rewarded
him.

"Claire P5 he murmured.

An exclamation at his elbow caused him to look up.
.There, leaning over a gate, the light of the moon fall-
ing on her beautiful face, stood Claire herself.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

IN trying interviews, as in sprint races, the start
is everything. It was the fact that she recovered
more quickly from her astonishment that enabled Claire
to dominate her scene with Bill. She had the advan-
tage of having a less complicated astonishment to re-
cover from, for, though it was a shock to see him there
when she had imagined that he was in New York, it
was not nearly such a shock as it was to him to see
her there when he had imagined that she was in Eng-
land. She had adjusted her brain to the situation
while he was still gaping.

"Well, Bill?"

This speech in itself should have been enough to
warn Lord Dawlish of impending doom. As far as
love, affection and tenderness are concerned, a girl
might just as well hit a man with an ax as say "Well,
Bill?" to him when they have met unexpectedly in the
moonlight after long separation. But Lord Dawlish
was too shattered by surprise to be capable of observ-
ing nuances. If his love had ever waned or faltered,
as conscience had suggested earlier in the day, it was
at full blast now.

"Claire P> he cried.

152

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

He was moving to take her in his arms, but she drew
back.

"No, really, Bill!" she said; and this time it did filter
through into his disordered mind that all was not well.
A man who is a good deal dazed at the moment may
fail to appreciate a remark like "Well, Bill?" but for
a girl to draw back and say, "No, really, Bill!" in a
tone not exactly of loathing, but certainly of pained
aversion, is a deliberately unfriendly act. The three
short words, taken in conjunction with the movement,
brought him up with as sharp a turn as if she had
punched him in the eye.

"Claire! What's the matter?"

She looked at him steadily. She looked at him with
a sort of queenly woodenness, as if he were behind a
camera with a velvet bag over his head and had just
told her to moisten the lips with the tip of the tongue.
Her aspect staggered Lord Dawlish. A cursory in-
spection of his conscience showed nothing but purity
and whiteness, but he must have done something or
she would not be staring at him like this.

"I don't understand !" was the only remark that oc-
curred to him.

"Are you sure?"

"What do you mean?"

"I was at Riegelheimer's Restaurant — Ah!"

The sudden start which Lord Dawlish had given at
158

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

the opening words of her sentence justified the con-
cluding word. Innocent as his behavior had been that
night at Riegelheimer's, he had been glad at the time
that he had not been observed. It now appeared that
he had been observed, and it seemed to him that Long
Island suddenly flung itself into a whirling dance. He
heard Claire speaking a long way off.

"I was there with Lady Wetherby. It was she who
invited me to come to America. I went to the restau-
rant to see her dance — and I saw you!"

With a supreme effort Bill succeeded in calming down
the excited landscape. He willed the trees to stop danc-
ing, and they came reluctantly to a standstill The
world ceased to swim and flicker.

"Let me explain," he said.

The moment he had said the words he wished he
could recall them. Their substance was right enough,
it was the sound of them that was wrong. They sounded
like a line from a farce, where the erring husband has
been caught by the masterful wife. They were ridicu-
lous. Worse than being merely ridiculous, they cre-
ated an atmosphere of guilt and evasion.

"Explain! How can you explain? It is impossible
to explain. I saw you with my own eyes making an
exhibition of yourself with a horrible creature in
salmon-pink. Fm not asking you who she is. Fm not
questioning you about your relations with her at all.

151

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

I don't care who she was. The mere fact that you
were at a public restaurant with a person of that
kind is enough. No doubt you think I am making a
great deal of fuss about a very ordinary thing. You
consider that it is a man's privilege to do these things,
if he can do them without being found out. But it
ended everything as far as I am concerned. Am I un-
reasonable? I don't think so. You steal off to Amer-
ica, thinking I am in England, and behave like this.
How could you do that if you really loved me? It's
the deceit of it that hurts me."

Lord Dawlish drew in a few breaths of pure Long
Island air, but he did not speak. He felt helpless.
If he were to be allowed to withdraw into the privacy
of the study and wrap a cold, wet towel about his
forehead and buckle down to it, he knew that he
could draft an excellent and satisfactory explanation
of his presence at Riegelheimer's with the Good Sport.
But to do it on the spur of the moment like this was
beyond him.

Claire was speaking again. She had paused for a
while after her recent speech, in order to think of some-
thing else to say; and during this pause had come
to her mind certain excerpts from one of those ad-
mirable articles on love, by Luella Delia Philpotts,
which do so much to boost the reading public of these
United States into the higher planes. She had read

155

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

it that afternoon in the Sunday paper, and it came
back to her now.

"I may be hypersensitive," she said, dropping her
voice from the accusatory register to the lower tones
of pathos, "but I have such high ideals of love. There
can be no true love where there is not perfect trust.
Trust is to love what "

She paused again. She could not remember just
what Luella Delia Philpotts had said trust was to
love. It was something extremely neat and true, but
it had slipped her memory.

"A woman has the right to expect the man she is
about to marry to regard their troth as a sacred ob-
ligation that shall keep him as pure as a young knight
who has dedicated himself to the quest of the Holy
Grail. And I find you in a public restaurant, dancing
with a creature with yellow hair, upsetting waiters, and
staggering about with pats of butter all over you."

Here a sense of injustice stung Lord Dawlish. It
was true that after his regrettable collision with Hein-
rich, the waiter, he had discovered butter upon his
person, but it was only one pat. Claire had spoken
as if he had been festooned with butter.

"I am not angry with you, only disappointed. What
has happened has shown me that you do not really
love me, not as I think of love. Oh, I know that when
we are together you think you do, but absence is the

156

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

test. Absence is the acid test of love that separates
the base metal from the true. After what has happened
we can't go on with our engagement. It would be
farcical. I could never feel that way toward you again.
We shall always be friends, I hope. But as for love —
love is not a machine. It cannot be shattered and put
together again."

She turned and began to walk up the drive. Hang-
ing over the top of the gate like a wet sock Lord
Dawlish watched her go. The interview was over, and
he could not think of one single thing to say. Her
white dress made a patch of light in the shadows. She
moved slowly, as if weighed down by sad thoughts, like
one who, as Luella Delia Philpotts beautifully puts it,
paces with measured step behind the coffin of a mur-
dered heart. The bend of the drive hid her from his
sight.

About twenty minutes later Dudley Pickering, smok-
ing sentimentally in the darkness hard by the porch,
received a shock. He was musing tenderly on his
Claire, who was assisting him in the process by singing
in the drawing-room, when he was aware of a figure,
the sinister figure of a man who, pressed against the
netting of the porch, stared into the lighted room
beyond.

Dudley Pickering's first impulse was to stride briskly
up to the intruder, tap him on the shoulder and ask

157

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

him what the devil he wanted; but a second look showed
him that the other was built on too ample a scale to
make this advisable. He was a large, fit-looking
intruder.

Mr. Pickering was alarmed. There had been the
usual epidemic of burglaries at Brookport that sea-
son. Houses had been broken into, valuable posses-
sions removed. In one case a negro butler had been
struck over the head with a gas pipe, and given a head-
ache. In these circumstances it was unpleasant to find
burly strangers looking in at windows.

"Hi!* cried Mr. Pickering.

The intruder leaped a foot. It had not occurred
to Lord Dawlish, when in an access of wistful yearn-
ing he had decided to sneak up to the house in order
to increase his anguish by one last glimpse of Claire,
that other members of the household might be out
in the grounds. He was just thinking sorrowfully, as
he listened to the music, how like his own position was
to that of the hero of Tennyson's "Maud" — a poem to
which he was greatly addicted — when Mr. Pickering's
"Hi ?' came out of nowhere and hit him like a torpedo.

He turned in agitation. Mr. Pickering having pru-
dently elected to stay in the shadows, there was no one
to be seen. It was as if the voice of conscience had
shouted "Hi!" at him. He was just wondering if he
had imagined the whole thing, when he perceived the

158

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

red glow of a cigar and beyond it a shadowy form.

It was not the fact that he was in an equivocal po-
sition, staring into a house which did not belong to
him, with his feet on somebody's else private soil, that
caused Bill to act as he did. It was the fact that at
that moment he was not feeling equal to conversa-
tion with anybody on any subject whatsoever. It did
not occur to him that his behavior might strike a
nervous stranger as suspicious. All he aimed at was
the swift removal of himself from a spot infested
by others of his species. He ran, and Mr. Pickering,
having followed him with the eye of fear, went rather
shakily into the house, his brain whirling with profes-
sional cracksmen and gas pipes and assaulted butlers,
to relate his adventure.

"A great, hulking, ruffianly sort of fellow glaring in
at the window," said Mr. Pickering. "I shouted at him
and he ran like a rabbit."

"Gee ! Must have been one of the gang that's been
working down here," said Roscoe Sheriff, "giving the
place the double-o before breaking in. There might
be a quarter of a column in that, properly worked,
but I guess Pd better wait until he actually does bust
the place."

"We must notify the police!"

"Notify the police, and have them butt in and stop
the thing and kill a good story?" There was honest

159

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

amazement in the press agent's voice* "Let me teU
you, it isn't so easy to get publicity these days that
you want to go out of your way to stop it!"

Mr. Pickering was appalled. A dislike of this man,
which had grown less vivid since his scene with Claire,
returned to him with redoubled force.

"Why, we may all be murdered in our beds!" he
cried.

"Front-page stuff!" said Roscoe Sherriff with gleam-
ing eyes. "And three columns at least. Fine !"

It might have consoled Lord Dawlish somewhat, as
he lay awake that night, to have known that the njan
who had taken Claire from him — though at present he
was not aware of such a man's existence — also slept ill.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

xra

LADY WETHERBY sat in her room, writing let-
ters. The rest of the household were variously
employed. Roscoe Sheriff was prowling about the
house, brooding on campaigns of publicity. Dudley
Pickering was walking in the grounds with Claire. In
a little shack in the woods that adjoined the high road,
which he had converted into a temporary studio,
Lord Wetherby was working on a picture which he
proposed to call "Innocence," a study of a small Italian
child he had discovered in Washington Square. Lady
Wetherby, who had been taken to see the picture, had
suggested "The Black Hand's Newest Recruit" as a
better title than the one selected by the artist.

It is a fact to be noted that of the entire household
only Lady Wetherby could fairly be described as
happy. It took very little to make Lady Wetherby
happy. Fine weather, good food, and a complete ab-
stention from classical dancing — give her these and
she asked no more. She was, moreover, delighted at
Claire's engagement. It seemed to her, for she had
no knowledge of the existence of Lord Dawlish, a genu-
ine manifestation of love's young dream. She liked
Dudley Pickering and she was devoted to Claire. It

161

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

made her happy to think that it was she who had
brought them together.

But of the other members of the party, Dudley
Pickering was unhappy because he feared that bur-
glars were about to raid the house; Roscoe Sherriff
because he feared they were not; Claire because, now
that the news of the engagement was out, it seemed to
be everybody's aim to leave her alone with Mr. Picker-
ing, whose undiluted society tended to pall. And Lord
Wetherby was unhappy because he found Eustace, the
monkey, a perpetual strain upon his artistic nerves.
It was Eustace who had driven him to his shack in
the woods. He could have painted far more comfort-
ably in the house, but Eustace had developed a habit
of stealing up to him and plucking the leg of his trous-
ers ; and an artist simply cannot give of his best with
that sort of thing going on.

Lady Wetherby wrote on. She was not fond of let-
ter-writing and she had allowed her correspondence
to accumulate; but she was disposing of it in an en-
ergetic and conscientious way when the entrance of
Wrench, the butler, interrupted her.

Wrench had been imported from England at the re-
quest of Lord Wetherby, who had said that it soothed
him and kept him from feeling homesick to see a butler
about the place. Since then he had been hanging to
the establishment, as it were, by a hair. He gave the

16*

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

impression of being always on the point of giving no-
tice. There were so many things connected with his
position of which he disapproved. He had made no of-
ficial pronouncement of the matter, but Lady Wetherby
knew that he disapproved of her classical dancing.
His last position had been with the Dowager Duchess
of Waveney, the well-known political hostess, who —
even had the somewhat generous lines on which she was
built not prevented the possibility of such a thing —
would have perished rather than dance barefooted in a*
public restaurant. Wrench also disapproved of Amer-
ica. That fact had been made plain immediately upon
his arrival in the country. He had given America
one look, and then his mind was made up — he disap-
proved of it.

"If you please, m'lady !"

Lady Wetherby turned. The butler was looking
even more than usually disapproving, and his disap-
proval had, so to speak, crystallized, as if it had found
some more concrete and definite objective than either
barefoot dancing or the United States.

"If you please, m'lady — the hape!"

It was Wrench's custom to speak of Eustace in a tone
of restrained disgust. He disapproved of Eustace.
The Dowager Duchess of Waveney, though she kept
open house for members of parliament, would have
drawn the line at monkeys.

163

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"The hape is behaving very strangely, m'lady," said
Wrench frostily.

It has been well said that in this world there is al-
ways something. A moment before Lady Wetherby
had been feeling completely contented, without a care
on her horizon. It was foolish of her to have expected
such a state of things to last, for what is life but a
series of sharp corners round each of which fate lies
in wait for us with a stuffed eelskin? Something in
the butler's manner, a sort of gloating gloom which
he radiated, told her that she had arrived at one of
these corners now.

"The hape is seated on the kitchen sink, mlady,
throwing new-laid eggs at the scullery maid, and cook
desired me to step up and ask for instructions."

"What.*" Lady Wetherby rose in agitation.
''What's he doing that for?" she asked weakly.

A slight, dignified gesture was Wrench's only reply.
It was not his place to analyze the motives of monkeys.

"Throwing eggs!"

The sight of Lady Wetherby's distress partially
melted the butler's stern reserve. He unbent so far as
to supply a clew.

"As I understand from cook, m'lady, the animal ap-
pears to have taken umbrage at a lack of cordiality
on the part of the cat. It seems that the hape at-
tempted to fondle the cat, but the latter scratched

164

Digitized by VjOOQ LC

'Removed himself to the sink and began to hurl eggs at
the scullery maid."

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

him; being suspicious/9 said Wrench, "of his bona
fides." He scrutinized the ceiling with a dull eye.
"Whereupon," he continued, "he seized her tail and
threw her with considerable force. He then removed
himself to the sink and began to hurl eggs at the scul-
lery maid."

Lady Wetherby's mental eye attempted to produce
a picture of the scene, but failed.

"I suppose I had better go down and see about it,"
she said.

Wrench withdrew his gaze from the ceiling.

"I think it would be advisable, m'lady. The scul-
lery maid is already in hysterics."

Lady Wetherby led the way to the kitchen. She was
wroth with Eustace. This was just the sort of thing
out of which Algie would be able to make unlimited
capital. It weakened her position with Algie. There
was only one thing to do — she must hush it up.

Her first glance, however, at the actual theater of
war, gave her the impression that matters had ad-
vanced beyond the hushing-up stage. A yellow deso-
lation brooded over the kitchen. It was not so much
a kitchen as an omelette. There were eggs everywhere,
from floor to ceiling. She crunched her way in on a
carpet of oozing shells.

Her entry was a signal for a renewal on a more
impressive scale of the uproar that she had heard while

166

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

opening the door. The air was full of voices. The
cook was expressing herself in Norwegian, the parlor
maid in what appeared to be Erse. On a chair in a
corner the scullery maid sobbed and whooped. The
odd- job man, who was a baseball enthusiast, was speak-
ing in terms of high praise of Eustace's combined speed
and control.

The only calm occupant of the room was Eustace
himself who, either through a shortage of ammunition
or through weariness of the pitching arm, had sus-
pended active hostilities and was now looking down on
the scene from a high shelf. There was a brooding
expression in his deep-set eyes. He massaged his right
ear with the sole of his left foot in a somewhat distrait
manner.

"And the first thing that happens," said the odd-job
man fervently, "me brave monk starts in to warm up.
He went to it, ma'am, like he was pitching the first
game of the World's Series. Gee, you'd orter of seen
his fast one! Walter Johnson's got nothing on
him!"

The sincerity of his enthusiasm did not touch Lady
Wetherby. She had but a moderate affection for the
national game.

"Eustace !" she cried severely.

Eustace lowered his foot and gazed at her medita-
tively, then at the odd- job man, who was comparing

166

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

him favorably with Grover Alexander, then at the scul-
lery maid, whose voice rose high above the din.

"I rather fancy, m'lady," said Wrench dispassion-
ately, "that the animal is about to hurl a plate."

It had escaped the notice of those present that the
shelf on which the rioter had taken refuge was within
comfortable reach of the dresser, but Eustace himself
had not overlooked this important strategic point.
As the butler spoke, Eustace picked up a plate and
threw it at the scullery maid, whom he seemed defi-
nitely to have picked out as the most hostile of the
allies. It was a fast inshoot, and hit the wall just
above her head.

" 'At-a-boy P' said the odd-job man reverently.

Lady Wetherby turned on him with some violence.
His detached attitude was the most irritating of the
many irritating aspects of the situation. She paid
this man a weekly wage to do odd jobs. The capture
of Eustace was essentially an odd job. Yet, instead of
doing it, he hung about with the air of one who has
paid his half-dollar and bought his bag of peanuts, and
has now nothing to do but look on and enjoy himself.

"Why don't you catch him?" she cried. "Why don't
you do something?"

The odd- job man came out of his trance. A sudden
realization came upon him that life was stern and life
was earnest, and that if he did not wish to jeopardize

167

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

a good situation he must curb his devotion to the great
American sport. Everybody was looking at him ex-
pectantly. It seemed to be definitely up to him. It
was imperative that, whatever he did, he should do it
quickly. There was an apron hanging over the back
of a chair. He changed abruptly from fan to matador.
More with the idea of doing something than because
he thought he would achieve anything definite thereby,
he picked up the apron and flung it at Eustace. Luck
was with him. The apron enveloped Eustace just as
he was winding up for another inshoot and was off
his balance. He tripped and fell, clutched at the apron
to save himself, and came to the ground swathed in
it, giving the effect of an apron mysteriously endowed
with life. The triumphant odd- job man, pressing his
advantage like a good general, gathered up the ends,
converted it into a rude bag, and one more was added
to the long list of the victories of the human over the
brute intelligence.

Everybody had a suggestion now. The cook advo-
cated drowning. The parlor maid favored the idea of
hitting the prisoner with a broom handle. Wrench,
eyeing the struggling apron disapprovingly, mentioned
that Mr. Pickering had bought a revolver that morning.

"Put him in the coal cellar," said Lady Wetherby.

Wrench was more farseeing.

"If I might offer the warning, malady," said Wrench,
168

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"not the cellar. It is full of coal. It would be placing
temptation in the animal's way."

The odd- job man indorsed this.

'He'd pitch a great game with coal, ma'am," he said,
almost wistfully.

"Put him in the garage then," said Lady Wetherby.

The odd- job man departed, bearing his heaving bag
at arm's length. The cook and the parlor maid ad-
dressed themselves to comforting and healing the scul-
lery maid. Wrench went off to polish silver, Lady
Wetherby to resume her letters. The cat was the last
of the party to return to the normal. She came down
from the chimney an hour later, covered with soot, de-
manding restoratives.

Lady Wetherby finished her letters. She cut them
short, for Eustace's insurgence had interfered with her
flow of ideas. She went into the drawing-room, where
she found Roscoe Sheriff strumming on the piano.

"Eustace has been raising Cain," she said.

The press agent looked up hopefully. He had been
wearing a rather preoccupied air.

"How's that?" he asked.

"Throwing eggs and plates in the kitchen."

The gleam of interest which had come into Roscoe
SherrifPs face died out.

"You couldn't get more than a fill-in at the bottom
of a column on that," he said regretfully. "I'm a lit-

169

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

tie disappointed in that monk. I hoped he would pan
out bigger. Well, I guess we've just got to give him
time. I have a hunch that he'll set the house on fire or
do something with a punch like that one of these days.
You mustn't get discouraged. Why, that puma I made
Valerie Devenish keep looked like a perfect flivver for
four whole months. A child could have played with
it. Miss Devenish called me up on the phone, I re-
member, and handed me the worst kind of beef. Said
she was darned if she was going to spend the rest
of her life maintaining an animal that might as well
be stuffed for all the pep it showed, and that she was
going right out to buy a white mouse instead. For-
tunately I talked her round.

"A few weeks later she came round and thanked me
with tears in her eyes. The puma had suddenly struck
real midseason form. It clawed the elevator boy, bit
a postman, chased the coon on the switchboard half
a dozen blocks along Central Park West, held up the
traffic for miles and was finally shot by a policeman.
Why, for. the next few days there was nothing in the
papers at all but Miss Devenish and her puma. There
was a war on at the time, in Mexico or somewhere,
and we had it backed off the front page so far that
it was over before it could get back. So, you see, there's
always hope. Fve been nursing the papers with bits
about Eustace, so as to be ready for the grandstand

170

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

play when it comes — and all we can do is to wait. It's
something if he's been throwing eggs. It shows he's
waking up."

The door opened and Lord Wetherby entered. He
looked fatigued. He sank into a chair and sighed.

"I cannot get it," he said. "It eludes me."

He lapsed into a somber silence.

"I'll be the goat," said Lady Wetherby cautiously.
"What can't you get?"

"The expression — the expression I want to get into^
the child's eyes in my picture, 'Innocence.' "

"But you have got it."

Lord Wetherby shook his head.

"Well, you had when I saw the picture," persisted
Lady Wetherby. "This child you're painting has just
joined the Black Hand. He has been rushed in young
over the heads of the waiting list because his father
had a pull. Naturally the kid wants to do something
to justify his election, and he wants to do it quick.
You have caught him at the moment when he sees an
old gentleman coming down the street and realizes that
he has only got to sneak up and stick his little
kaffe "

"My dear Polly. I welcome criticism, but this is
mere "

Lady Wetherby stroked his coat sleeve fondly.

"Never mind, Algie, I was only joshing you, precious.
171

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

I thought the picture was coming along fine when
you showed it to me. Pll come and take another look
at it."

Lord Wetherby shook his head.

"I should have a model. An artist cannot mirror
Nature properly without a model. I wish you would
invite that child down here."

"No, Algie, there are limits. I wouldn't have him
within a mile of the place."

"Yet you keep Eustace."

"Well, you made me engage Wrench. It's fifty-fifty.
I wish you wouldn't keep picking on Eustace, Algie
dear. He does no harm. Mr. Sherriff and I were just
saying how peaceable he is. He wouldn't hurt "

Claire came in.

"Polly," she said, "did you put that monkey of yours
in the garage? He's just bitten Dudley in the leg."

Lord Wetherby uttered an exclamation.

"Now perhaps " k

"We went in just now to have a look at the car,"
continued Claire. "Dudley wanted to show me the
commutator on the exhaust box or the wind screen
or something, and he was just bending over when Eus-
tace jumped out from nowhere and pinned him. I'm
afraid he has taken it to heart rather."

Roscoe Sherriff pondered.

"Is this worth half a column?" He shook his head.

178

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"No, Fin afraid not. The public doesn't know Picker-
ing. If it had been Charlie Chaplin or William J.
Bryan or someone on those lines, we could have had
the papers bringing out extras. You can visualize
William J. Bryan being bitten in the leg by a monkey.
It hits you. You've seen his legs at Chautauqua meet-
ings. But Pickering! Eustace might just as well
have bitten the leg of the table," he concluded bit-
terly.

Lord Wetherby reasserted himself.

"Now that the animal has become a public men-
ace "

"He's nothing of the kind," said Lady Wetherby.
"He's only a little upset today."

"Do you mean, Pauline, that even after this you
will not get rid of him?"

"Certainly not, poor dear."

"Very well," said Lord Wetherby with frozen calm.
"I give you warning that if he attacks me I shall de-
fend myself."

He brooded. Lady Wetherby turned to Claire.

"What happened then? Did you shut the door of
the garage?"

"Yes, but not until Eustace had got away. He
slipped out like a streak and disappeared. It was too
dark to see which way he went."

Dudley Pickering limped heavily into the room.
178

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"I was just telling them about you and Eustice,
Dudley."

Mr. Pickering nodded moodily. He was too full for
words.

"I think Eustace must be mad," said Claire.

Roscoe Sherriff uttered a cry of rapture.

"You've said it P' he exclaimed. "I knew we should
get action sooner or later. It's the puma over again.
Now we are all right. Now I have something to work
on. 'Monkey Menaces Countryside.' 'Long Island
Summer Colony in Panic' 'Mad Monkey Bites
One ' "

A convulsive shudder galvanized Mr. Pickering's
portly frame.

"'Mad Monkey Terrorizes Long Island. One
Dead?" murmured Roscoe Sherriff wistfully. "Do
you feel a sort of shooting, Pickering — a kind of burn-
ing sensation under the skin? Lady Wetherby, I
guess I'll be getting some of the papers on the phone.
We've got a big story."

He hurried to the telephone, but it was some little
time before he could use it. Dudley Pickering was in
possession, talking earnestly to the local doctor.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

XIV

IT was Nutty Boyd's habit to retire immediately
after dinner to his bedroom. What he did there
Elizabeth did not know. Sometimes she pictured him
reading, sometimes thinking. Neither supposition was
correct. Nutty never read. Newspapers bored him
and books made his head ache. And, as for thinking,
he had the wrong shape of forehead. The nearest he
ever got to meditation was a sort of trance-like state,
a kind of suspended animation in which his mind drifted
sluggishly like a log in a backwater. Nutty, it is re-
grettable to say, went to his room after dinner for
the purpose of imbibing two or three surreptitious rye
highballs.

He behaved in this way, he told himself, purely in
order, to spare Elizabeth anxiety. There had been in
the past a fool of a doctor who had prescribed total
abstinence for Nutty, and Elizabeth knew this. There-
fore, Nutty held, to take the mildest of snorts with her
knowledge would have been to fill her with fears for his
safety. So he went to considerable inconvenience to
keep the matter from her notice, and thought rather
highly of himself for doing so.

It certainly was inconvenient, there was no doubt of
175

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

that. It made him feel like a cross between a hunted
fawn and a burglar. But he had to some extent dimin-
ished the possibility of surprise by leaving his door
open; and tonight he approached the closet where he
kept the materials for refreshment with a certain con-
fidence. He had left Elizabeth on the porch in a ham-
mock, apparently anchored for some time. Lord Daw-
lish was out in the grounds somewhere. Presently he
would come in and join Elizabeth on the porch. The
risk of interruption was negligible.

Nutty mixed himself a highball, and settled down
to brood bitterly, as he often did, on the doctor who
had made that disastrous statement. Doctors were al-
ways saying things like that — sweeping things which
nervous people took too literally. It was true that
he had been in pretty bad shape at the moment when
the words had been spoken. It was just at the end
of his Broadway career, when, as he handsomely ad-
mitted, there was a certain amount of truth in the
opinion that his interior needed a vacation. But since
then he had been living in the country, breathing good
air, taking things easy. In these altered conditions
and after this lapse of time it was absurd to imagine
that a moderate amount of alcohol could do him any
harm.

It hadn't done him any harm, that was the point.
He had tested the doctor's statement and found it in-

176

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

correct. He had spent three hectic days and nights in
New York, and — after a reasonable interval — had felt
much the same as usual. And since then he had im-
bibed each night, and nothing had happened. What
it came to was that the doctor was a chump, a pes-
simist and a blighter. Simply that and nothing more.

Having come to this decision Nutty mixed another
highball. He went to the head of the stairs and lis-
tened. He heard nothing. He returned to his room.

Yes, that was it, the doctor was a chump. He had
hinted at all sorts of terrible things as the penalty
for the slightest deviation from his instructions, and
.his bluff had been called. So far from doing him any
harm, these nightly potations brightened Nutty up,
gave him heart and enabled him to endure life in this
hole of a place. He felt a certain scornful amuse-
ment. Doctors, he supposed, had to get off that sort
of talk to earn their money.

He reached out for the bottle, and as he grasped it
his eye was caught by something on the floor. A brown
monkey with a long gray tail was sitting there staring
at him.

There was one of those painful pauses. Nutty looked
at the monkey, rather like an elongated Macbeth in-
specting the ghost of Banquo. The monkey looked at
Nutty. The pause continued. Nutty shut his eyes,
counted ten slowly and opened them.

177

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

The monkey was still there. "Boo!" said Nutty in
an apprehensive undertone.

The monkey looked at him.

Nutty shut his eyes again. He would count sixty
this time. A cold fear had laid its clammy fingers on
his heart. This was what that doctor — not such a
chump after all — must have meant !

Nutty began to count. There seemed to be a heavy
lump inside him and his mouth was dry; but other-
wise he felt all right. That was the grewsome part
of it — this dreadful thing had come upon him at a mo-
ment when he could have sworn that he was as sound
as a bell. If this had happened in the days when he
ranged the Great White Way, sucking up deleterious
moisture like a cloud, it would have been intelligible.
But it had sneaked upon him like a thief in the night ;
it had stolen unheralded into his life when he had prac-
tically reformed. What was the good of practically
reforming if this sort of thing was going to happen
to one?

"... Fifty-nine . . . sixty."

He opened his eyes. The monkey was still there, in
precisely the same attitude, as if it was sitting for its
portrait. Panic surged upon Nutty. He lost his head
completely. He uttered a wild yell and threw the bot-
tle at the apparition.

Life had not been treating Eustace well that evening.
178

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

He seemed to have happened upon one of those days
when everything goes wrong. The cat had scratched
him, the odd- job man had swathed him in an apron,
and now this stranger, in whom he had found at first
a pleasant restfulness, soothing after the recent scenes
of violence in which he had participated, did this to
him. He dodged the missile and clambered on the
top of the wardrobe. It was his instinct in times of
stress to seek the high spots. And then Elizabeth
hurried into the room.

Elizabeth had been lying in the hammock on the
porch when her brother's yell had broken forth. It
was a lovely, calm, moonlight night, and she had been
reveling in the peace of it, when suddenly this outcry
from above had shot her out of her hammock like an
explosion. She ran upstairs, fearing she knew not
what. She found Nutty sitting on the bed, looking like
an overwrought giraffe.

"Whatever is the " she began; and then things

began to impress themselves on her senses.

The bottle which Nutty had thrown at Eustace had
missed the latter, but it had hit the wall and was now
lying in many pieces on the floor, and the air was heavy
with the scent of it. The remains seemed to leer
at her with a kind of furtive swagger, after the man-
ner of broken bottles. A quick thrill of anger ran
through Elizabeth. She had always felt more like a

179

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

mother to Nutty than a sister, and now she would
have liked to exercise the maternal privilege of slapping
him*

"Nutty P'

"I saw a monkey P' said her brother hollowly. "I
was standing over there and I saw a monkey ! Of course
it wasn't there really. I flung the bottle at it, and it
seemed to climb into that wardrobe."

"This wardrobe ?"

"Yes."

Elizabeth struck it a resounding blow with the palm
of her hand, and Eustace's face popped over the edge,
peering down anxiously. "I can see it now," said
Nutty. A sudden faint hope came to him. "Can you
see it?" he asked.

Elizabeth did not speak for a moment. This was
an unusual situation, and she was wondering how to
treat it. She was sorry for Nutty, but Providence had
sent this thing and it would be foolish to reject it.
She must look on herself in the light of a doctor. It
would be kinder to Nutty in the end. She had the
feminine aversion to the lie deliberate. Her ethics
on the suggestio falsi were weak. She looked at Nutty
questioningly.

"See it?" she said.

"Don't you see a monkey on the top of the ward-
robe?" said Nutty, becoming more definite,

180

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"There's a sort of bit of wood sticking out "

Nutty sighed.

"No, not that. You don't see it. I didn't think you
would."

He spoke so dejectedly that for a moment Eliza-
beth weakened, but only for an instant.

"Tell me all about this, Nutty," she said.

Nutty was beyond the desire for evasion and con-
cealment. His one wish was to tell. He told all.

"But, Nutty, how silly of you!"

"Yes."

"After what the doctor said."

"I know."

"You remember his telling you "

"I know. Never again !"

"What do you mean?"

"I quit. I'm going on the wagon."

Elizabeth embraced him maternally.

"That's a good child," she said. "You really prom-
ise?"

"I don't have to promise, I'm just going to do
it."

Elizabeth compromised with her conscience by be-
coming soothing.'

"You know, this isn't so very serious, Nutty, darling.
I mean it's just a warning."

"It's warned me all right."
181

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"You will be perfectly all right if "

Nutty interrupted her,

"You're sure you can't see anything?"

"See what?"

Nutty's voice became almost apologetic.

"I know it's just imagination, but the monkey seems
to me to be climbing down from the wardrobe."

"I can't see anything climbing down the wardrobe,"
said Elizabeth, as Eustace touched the floor.

"It's come down now. It's crossing the carpet."

"Where?"

"It's gone now. It went out of the door."

"OhP'

"I say, Elizabeth, what do you think I ought to do?"

"I should go to bed and have a nice long sleep, and
you'll feel "

"Somehow I don't feel much like going to bed. This
sort of thing upsets a chap, you knowP'

"Poor dear!"

"I think Til go for a long walk."

"That's a splendid idea."

"I think I'd better do a good lot of walking from
now on. Didn't Chalmers bring down some Indian
clubs with him? I think Fll borrow them. I ought to
keep out in the open a lot, I think. I wonder if there's
any special diet I ought to have. Well, anyway, 111
be going for that walk."

188

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

At the foot of the stairs Nutty stopped. He looked
quietly into the porch, then looked away again.

"What's the matter ?" asked Elizabeth.

"I thought for a moment I saw the monkey sitting
on the hammock."

He went out of the house and disappeared from view
down the drive, walking with long, rapid strides.

Elizabeth' 8 first act, when he had gone, was to fetch
a banana from the icebox. Her knowledge of monkeys
was slight, but she fancied they looked with favor on
bananas. It was her intention to conciliate Eustace.

She had placed Eustace by now. Unlike Nutty, she
read the papers, and she knew all about Lady Wetherby
and her pets. The fact that Lady Wetherby, as she
had been informed by the grocer in friendly talk across
the counter, had rented a summer home in the neighbor-
hood made Eustace's identity positive.

She had no very clear plans as to what she intended
to do with Eustace, beyond being quite resolved that
she was going to board and lodge him for a few days.
Nutty had had the jolt he needed, but it might be
that the first freshness of it would wear away, in which
event it would be convenient to have Eustace on the
premises. She regarded Eustace as a sort of medi-
cine. A second dose might not be necessary, but it was
as well to have the mixture handy. She took another
banana, in case the first might not be sufficient to soothe

188

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

her visitor's wounded spirit. She then returned to the
porch.

Eustace was sitting on the hammock, brooding. The
complexities of life were weighing him down a good
deal. He was not aware of Elizabeth's presence until
he found her standing by him. He had just braced
himself for flight when he perceived that she bore rich
gifts.

Eustace was always ready for a light snack — readier
now than usual, for air and exercise had sharpened
his appetite. He took the banana in a detached man-
ner, as if to convey the idea that it did not commit
him to any particular course of conduct. It was a
good banana, and he stretched out a hand for the
other. Elizabeth sat down beside him, but he did not
move. He was convinced now of her good intentions.
It was thus that Lord Dawlish found them when he
came in from the garden.

"Where has your brother gone to?" he asked. "He
passed me just now at eight miles an hour. Great
Scott! What's that?"

"It's a monkey. Don't frighten him, he's rather
nervous."

She tickled Eustace under the ear, for their rela-
tions were now friendly.

"Nutty went for a walk because he thought he
saw it."

184

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Thought he saw it?"

"Thought he saw it," repeated Elizabeth firmly.
"Will you remember, Mr. Chalmers, that, as far as he
}s concerned, this monkey has no existence."

"I don't understand."

Elizabeth explained.

"You see now?"

"I see. But how long are you going to keep the
animal?"

"Just a day or two — in case."

"Where are you going to keep it?"

"In the outhouse. Nutty never goes there, it's too
near the beehives."

"I suppose you don't know who the owner is?"

"Yes, I do ; it must be Lady Wetherby."

"Lady Wetherby!"

"She's a woman who dances at one of the restau-
rants. I read in a Sunday paper about her monkey.
She has just taken a house near here. I don't see
who else the animal could belong to. Monkeys are
rarities on Long Island."

Bill was silent. "Sudden a thought came like a full-
blown rose, flushing his brow." For days he had been
trying to find an excuse for calling on Lady Wetherby
as a first step toward meeting Claire again. Here
it was. There would be no need to interfere with Eliza-
beth's plans. He would be vague. He would say he

186

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money,

had just seen the runaway, but would not add where.
He would create an atmosphere of helpful sympathy.
Perhaps, later on, Elizabeth would let him take the
monkey back.

"What are you thinking about?" asked Elizabeth.

"Oh, nothing," said Bill.

"Perhaps we had better stow away our visitor for
the night."

"Yes."

Elizabeth got up.

"Poor, dear Nutty may be coming back at any mo-
ment now," she said.

But poor, dear Nutty did not return for a full two
hours. When he did he was dusty and tired, but al-
most cheerful.

"I didn't see the brute once all the time I was out,"
he told Elizabeth. "Not once!"

Elizabeth kissed him fondly and offered to heat
water for a bath; but Nutty said he would take it
cold. From now on, he vowed, nothing but cold baths.
He conveyed the impression of being a blend of re-
pentant sinner and hardy Norseman. Before he went
to bed he approached Bill on the subject of Indian
clubs.

"I want to get myself into shape, old top," he
said.

"Yes?"

186

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"I've got to cut it out — tonight I thought I saw a
monkey."

"Redly?"

"As plain as I see you now." Nutty gave the clubs
a tentative swing. "What do you do with these darned
things? Swinging them about and all that? All
right, I see the idea. Good night."

But Bill did not pass a good night. He lay awake
long, thinking over his plans for the morrow.

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

LADY WETHERBY was feeling battered. She
had not realized how seriously Roscoe Sherriff
took the art of publicity, nor what would be the result
of the half-hour he had spent at the telephone on the
night of the departure of Eustace.

Roscoe SherrifPs eloquence had fired the imagination
of editors. There had been a notable lack of interest-
ing happenings this summer. Nobody seemed to be
striking or murdering or having violent accidents. The
universe was torpid. In these circumstances the escape
of Eustace seemed to present possibilities. Reporters
had been sent down. There were three of them living
in the house now, and Wrench's air of disapproval was
deepening every hour.

It was their strenuousness which had given Lady
Wetherby that battered feeling. There was strenuous-
ness in the air, and she resented it on her vacation.
She had come to Long Island to vegetate, and with
all this going on round her vegetation was impossible.
She was not long alone. Wrench entered. "A gentle-
man to see you, mlady."

In the good old days, when she had been plain Polly
Davis, of the personnel of the chorus of various musi-

188

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

cal comedies, Lady Wetherby would have suggested a
short way of disposing of this untimely visitor ; but she
had a position to keep up now.

"From some darned paper?" she asked wearily.

"No, m'lady. I fancy he is not connected with the
press."

There was something in Wrench's manner that per-
plexed Lady Wetherby, something almost human, as
if Wrench were on the point of coming alive. She
did not guess it, but the explanation was that Bill,
quite unwittingly, had impressed Wrench. There was
that about Bill that reminded the butler of London
and dignified receptions at the house of the Dowager
Duchess of Waveney. It was deep calling to deep.

"Where is he?"

"I have shown him into the drawing-room, m'lady ."

Lady Wetherby went downstairs and found a large
young man awaiting her, looking nervous.

Bill was feeling nervous. A sense of the ridiculous-
ness of his mission had come upon him. After all, he
asked himself, what on earth had he got to say? A
presentiment had come upon him that he was about
to look a perfect ass. At the sight of Lady Wetherby
his nervousness began to diminish. Lady Wetherby
was not a formidable person. In spite of her momen-
tary peevishness, she brought with her an atmosphere
of geniality and camaraderie.

189

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"It's about your monkey," he said, coming to the
point at once.

Lady Wetherby brightened.

"Oh! Have you seen it?"

He was glad that she put it like that.

"Yes. It came round our way last night."

"Where is that?"

"I am staying at a farm near here, a place they call
Flack's. The monkey got into one of the rooms."

"Yes?"

"And then — er — then it got out again, don't you
know."

Lady Wetherby looked disappointed.

"So it may be anywhere now?" she said.

In the interests of truth, Bill thought it best to
leave this question unanswered.

"Well, it's very good of you to have bothered to
come out and tell me," said Lady Wetherby. "It
gives us a clew, at any rate. Thank you. At least
we know now in which direction it went."

There was a pause. Bill gathered that the other
was looking on the interview as terminated, and that
she was expecting him to go, and he had not begun to
say what he wanted to say. He tried to think of a way
of introducing the subject of Claire that should not
seem too abrupt.

"Er- " be said.

K90

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Well," said Lady Wetherby simultaneously.

"I beg your pardon."

"You have the floor," said Lady Wetherby.
"Shoot r

It was not what she had intended to say. For
months she had been trying to get out of the habit of
saying that sort of thing, but she still suffered re-
lapses. Only the other day she had told Wrench
to check some domestic problem or other with his hat,
and he had nearly given notice. But if she had been
intending to put Bill at his ease she could not have
said anything better.

"You have a Miss Fenwick staying with you, haven't
you?" he said.

Lady, Weatherby beamed.

"Do you know Claire?"

"Yes, rather j»

"She's my best friend. We used to be in the same
company when I was in England."

"So she has told me."

"She was my bridesmaid when I married Lord Weth-
erby."

"Yes."

Lady Wetherby was feeling perfectly happy now,
and when Lady Wetherby felt happy she always be-
came garrulous. She was one of those people who are
incapable of looking on anybody as a stranger after

191

Digitized by LjOOQIC

Uneasy Money

five minutes' acquaintance. Already she had begun to
regard Bill as an old friend.

"Those were great days," she said cheerfully. "None
of us had a beau, and Algie was the hardest-up of the
whole bunch. After we were married we went to the
Savoy for the wedding breakfast, and when it was
over and the waiter came with the check Algie said he
was sorry, but he had had a bad week at Lincoln and
hadn't the price on him. He tried to touch me, but
I passed. Then he had a go at the best man, but the
best man had nothing in the world but one suit of
clothes and a spare collar. Claire was broke, too, so
the end of it was that the best man had to sneak out
and pawn my watch and the wedding-ring."

The room rang with her reminiscent laughter, Bill
supplying a bass accompaniment. Bill was delighted.
He had never hoped that it would be granted to him
to become so rapidly intimate with Claire's hostess.
Why, he had only to keep the conversation in this
chummy vein for a little while longer and she would
give him the run of the house.

"Miss Fenwick isn't in now, I suppose?" he asked.

"No, Claire's out with Dudley Pickering. You don't
know him, do you?"

"No."

"She's engaged to him."

It is an ironical fact that Lady Wetherby was by
192

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

nature one of the firmest believers in existence in the
policy of breaking things gently to people. She had
a big, soft heart and she hated hurting her fellows.
As a rule, when she had bad news to impart to any-
one, she administered the Mow so gradually and with
such mystery as to the actual facts that the victim,
having passed through the various stages of imagined
horrors, was genuinely relieved when she actually came
to the point to find that all that had happened was
that he had lost all his money. * But now in perfect
innocence, thinking only to pass along an interesting
bit of information, she had crushed Bill as effectively
as if she had used a club for that purpose.

"I'm tickled to death about it," she went on, as it
were, over her hearer's prostrate body. "It was I who
brought them together, you know. I wrote telling
Claire to come out here on the Atlantic, knowing that
Dudley was sailing on that boat. I had a hunch they
would hit it off together. Dudley fell for her right
away, and she must have fallen for him, for they had
only known each other for about a couple of weeks
when they came and told me they were engaged. It
happened last Sunday."

"Last Sunday!"

It had seemed to Bill a moment before that he would
never again be capable of speech, but this statement
dragged the words out of him. Last Sunday ! Why, it

193

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

was last Sunday that Claire had broken off her engage-
ment with him.

"Last Sunday at nine o'clock in the evening, with
a full moon shining and soft music going on offstage.
Real third-act stuff."

Bill felt positively dizzy. He groped back in his
memory for facts. He had gone out for his walk
after dinner. They had dined at eight. He had been
walking some time. Why, in Heaven's name, this was
the quickest thing in the amatory annals of civiliza-
tion. His brain was too numbed to work out a per-
fectly accurate schedule, but it looked as if she must
have got engaged to this Pickering person before she
met him, Bill, in the road that night.

"It's a wonderful match for dear old Claire," re-
sumed Lady Wetherby, twisting the knife in the wound
with a happy unconsciousness. "Dudley's not only a
corking good fellow, but he has thirty million dollars
stuffed away in the stocking and a business that brings
him in a perfectly awful mess of money every year.
He's the Pickering of the Pickering automobiles, you
know."

Bill got up. He stood for a moment holding to the
back of his chair before speaking. It was almost ex-
actly thus that he had felt in the days when he had
gone in for boxing and had stopped forceful swings
with the more sensitive portions of his person.

194

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"That— that's splendid," he said. "I— I think I'll
be going."

"I heard the car outside just now," said Lady Weth-
erby. "I think it's probably Claire and Dudley come
back. Won't you wait and see her?"

Bill shook his head.

"Well, gooid-by for the present then. You must
come round again. Any friend of Claire's — and it was
bully of you to bother about looking in to tell me
about Eustace."

Bill had reached the door. He was about to turn
the handle when someone turned it on the other
side.

"Why, here is Dudley," said Lady Wetherby. "Dud-
ley, this is a friend of Claire's."

Dudley Pickering was one of those men who take
the ceremony of introduction with a measured so-
lemnity. It was his practice to grasp the party of the
second part firmly by the hand, hold it, look into his
eyes in a reverent manner, and get off some little speech
of appreciation, short, but full of feeling. The open-
ing part of this ceremony he performed now. He
grasped Bill's hand firmly, held it and looked into his
eyes. And then having performed his business, he fell
down on his lines. Not a word proceeded from him.
He dropped the hand and stared at Bill amazedly
and — more than that — with fear.

195

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Bill, too, uttered no word. It was not one of those
chatty meetings.

But if they were short on words, both Bill and Mr.
Pickering were long on looks. Bill stared at Mr. Pick-
ering. Mr. Pickering stared at Bill.

Bill was drinking in Mr. Pickering. The stoutness
of Mr. Pickering — the elderliness of Mr. Pickering —
the dullness of Mr. Pickering — all these things he per-
ceived. And illumination broke upon him.

Mr. Pickering was drinking in Bill. The largeness
of Bill — the embarrassment of Bill — the obvious villainy
of Bill — none of these things escaped his notice. And
illumination broke upon him also.

For Dudley Pickering, in the first moment of their
meeting, had recognized Bill as the man who had
been lurking in the grounds and peering in at the win-
dow, the man at whom on the night when he had become
engaged to Claire he had shouted "Hi!"

"Where's Claire, Dudley?" asked Lady Wether-

by.

Mr. Pickering withdrew his gaze reluctantly from
Bill.

"Gone upstairs."

"I'll go and tell her that you're here, Mr. >

You never told me your name?"

Bill came to life with an almost acrobatic abrupt-
ness. There were many things of which at that mo-
rn

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

ment he felt absolutely incapable, and meeting Claire
was one of them.

"No, I must be going," he said hurriedly. "Good-
by."

He came very near running out of the room. Lady
Wetherby regarded the practically slammed door with
wide eyes.

"Quick exit of Nut Comedian !" she said. "Whatever
was the matter with the man? He's scorched a trail in
the carpet!"

Mr. Pickering was trembling violently.

"Do you know who that was? He was the man!"
said Mr. Pickering.

"What man?"

"The man I caught looking in at the window that
night !"

"What nonsense ! You must be mistaken. He said
he knew Claire quite well."

"But when you suggested that he should meet her
he ran."

This aspect of the matter had not occurred to Lady
Wetherby.

"So he did!"

"What did he tell you that showed he knew Claire ?"

"Well, now that I come to think of it, he didn't
tell me anything. I did the talking. He just sat
there."

197

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

SMfitC

Uneasy Money,

Mr. Pickering quivered with combined fear and ex-
citement and inductive reasoning.

"It was a trick !" he cried. "Remember what Sherriff
said that night when I told you about finding the man
looking in at the window. He said that the fellow
was spying round as a preliminary move. Today he
trumps up an obviously false excuse for getting into the
house. Was he left alone in the room at all?"

"Yes. Wrench loosed him in here and then came
up to tell me."

"For several minutes, then, he was alone in the house.
Why, he had time to do all he wanted to do!"

"Calm down!"

"I am perfectly calm. But "

"You've been seeing too many crook plays, Dudley.
A man isn't necessarily a burglar because he wears a
decent suit of clothes."

"Why was he lurking in the grounds that night?"

"You're just imagining that it was the same man."

"I am absolutely positive it was the same man."

"Well, we can easily settle one thing about him,
at any rate. Here comes Claire. Claire, old girl," she
said, as the door opened, "do you know a man

named Darn it, I never got his name, but

he's "

Claire stood in the doorway, looking from one to
the other.

198

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"What's the matter, Dudley?" she said.

"Dudley's gone clean up in the air," explained Lady
Wetherby tolerantly. "A friend of yours called to
tell me he had seen Eustace "

"So that was his excuse, was it?" said Dudley Pick-
ering. "Did he say where Eustace was?"

"No; he said he had seen him, that was alL"

"An obviously trumped-up story. He had heard of
Eustace's escape, and he knew that any story con-
nected with him would be a passport into the house P*

Lady Wetherby turned to Claire.

"You haven't told us yet if you know the man. He
was a big, tall, broad gazook," said Lady Wetherby.
"Very English."

"He faked the English," said Dudley Pickering.
"That man was no more an Englishman than I am.
He acted well, but I could see the Tenderloin sticking
out of him."

"Be patient with him, Claire," urged Lady Wetherby.
"He's been going to the movies too much, and thinks
every man who has had his trousers pressed is a social
gangster. This man was the most English thing I've
ever seen — talked like this."

She gave a passable reproduction of Bill's speech.
Claire started.

"I don't know him!" she cried.

Her mind was in a whirl of agitation. Why had
199

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Bill come to the house? What had he said? Had he
told Dudley anything?

"I don't recognize the description," she said quickly.
"I don't know anything about him."

"There !" said Dudley Pickering triumphantly.

"It's queer," said Lady Wetherby. "You're sure
you don't know him, Claire?"

"Absolutely sure."

"He said he was living at a place near here called
Flack's."

"I know the place," said Dudley Pickering. "A
sinister, tumble-down sort of place. Just where he
would be living."

"I thought it was a bee farm," said Lady Wetherby.
"One of the tradesmen told me about it. I saw a
most corkingly pretty girl bicycling down to the village
one morning, and they told me she was named Boyd
and kept a bee farm at Flack's."

"A blind!" said Mr. Pickering stoutly. "The girl's
the man's accomplice. It's quite easy to see the way
they work. The girl comes and settles in the place
so that everybody knows her. That's to lull suspicion.
Then the man comes down for a visit and goes about
cleaning up the neighboring houses. You can't get
away from the fact that this summer there have been
half a dozen burglaries down here; and nobody has
found out who did them."

800

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Lady Wetherby looked at him indulgently.

"And now/' she said, "having got us scared stiff,
what are you going to do about it?"

"I am going," he said with determination, "to take
steps."

He went out quickly, the keen, tense man of affairs.

"Bless him!" said Lady Wetherby. "I'd no idea
your Dudley had so much imagination, Claire. He's
a perfect bombshell."

Claire laughed shakily.

"It is odd, though," said Lady Wetherby medita-
tively, "that this man should have said that he knew
you, when you don't "

Claire turned impulsively.

"Polly, I want to tell you something. Promise you
won't tell Dudley. I wasn't telling the truth just now.
I do know this man. I was engaged to him once!"

"What!"

"For goodness' sake don't tell Dudley."

"But "

"It's all over now; but I used to be engaged to
him."

"Not when I was in England ?"

"No, after that."

"Then he didn't know you are engaged to Dudley
now?"

"N-no. I — I haven't seen him for a long time."
201

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Lady Wetherby looked remorseful.

"Poor man! I must have given him a jolt! But
why didn't you tell me about him before?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Oh, well, Pm not inquisitive. There's no rubber in
my composition. It's your affair."

"You won't tell Dudley?"

"Of course not. But why not? You've nothing to
be ashamed of."

"No, but "

"Well, I won't tell him anyway. But Pm glad
you told me about him. Dudley was so eloquent about
burglars that he almost had me going. I wonder where
he rushed off to?"

Dudley Pickering had rushed off to his bedroom and
was examining a revolver there. He examined it care-
fully, keenly. Preparedness was Dudley Pickering's
slogan. He looked rather like a stout sheriff in a film
drama.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

XVI

IN the interesting land of India, where snakes abound!
and scorpions are common objects of the wayside,
a native who has had the misfortune to be bitten by
one of the latter pursues an admirably common-sense
plan. He does not stop to lament, nor does he hang
about analyzing his emotions. He runs and runs and
runs, and keeps on running until he has worked the
poison out of his system. Not until then does he at-
tempt introspection.

Lord Dawlish, though ignorant of this fact, pursued
almost identically the same policy. He did not run
on leaving Lady Wetherby's house, but he took a very
long and very rapid walk, than which in times of stress
there are few things of greater medicinal value to the
human mind. To increase the similarity, he was con-
scious of a curious sense of being poisoned. He felt
stifled — in want of air.

Bill was a simple young man and he had a simple
code of ethics. Above all things he prized and ad-
mired and demanded from his friends the quality of
straightness. It was his one demand. He had never
actually had a criminal friend, but he was quite capable
of intimacy with even a criminal, provided only that

203

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

there was something spacious about his brand of crime
and that it did not involve anything mean or under-
hand.

It was the fact that Mr. Breitstein, whom Claire
had wished him to insinuate into his club, though ac-
quitted of actual crime, had been proved guilty of mean-
ness and treachery, that had so prejudiced Bill against
him. The worst accusation that he could bring against
a man was that he was not square, that he had not
played the game.

Claire had not been square. It was that, more than
the shock of surprise at Lady Wetherby's news, that
had sent him striding along the State Road at the
rate of five miles an hour, staring before him with un-
seeing eyes. She had fooled him. She had lied to him.
A sudden recollection of their last interview brought
a dull flush to Bill's face and accelerated his speed. He
felt physically ill.

It was not immediately that he had arrived at even
this sketchy outline of his feelings. For perhaps a
mile he walked as the scorpion stung natives ran —
blindly, wildly, with nothing in his mind but a desire
to walk faster and faster, to walk as no man had ever
walked before. And then — one does not wish to be
unduly realistic, but the fact is too important to be
ignored — he began to perspire. And hard upon that
unrefined but wonder-working flow came a certain heal-

£04

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money \

ing of spirit. Dimly at first, but every moment more
clearly, he found it possible to think.

In a man of Bill's temperament there are so many
qualities wounded by a blow such as he had received
that it is hardly surprising that his emotions, when he
began to analyze them, were mixed. Now one, now an-
other of his wounds presented itself to his notice. And
then individual wounds would become difficult to dis-
tinguish in the mass of injuries. Spiritually he was in
the position of a man who has been hit simultaneously
in a number of sensitive spots by a variety of hard
and hurtful things. He was as little able, during the
early stages of his meditations, to say where he was
hurt most, as a man who had been stabbed in the back,
bitten in the ankle, hit in the eye, smitten with a black-
jack and kicked on the shin in the same moment of
time. All that such a man would be able to say with
certainty would be that unpleasant things had hap-
pened to him; and that was all that Bill was able to
say.

Little by little, walking swiftly the while, he began
to make a rough inventory. He sorted out his injuries,
catalogued them. It was perhaps his self-esteem that
had suffered least of all, for he was by nature modest.
He had a saving humility, valuable in a crisis of this
sort.

But he had looked up to Claire. He had thought
205

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money,

her straight. And all the time that she had been saying
those things to him that night of their last meeting
she had been engaged to another man, a fat, bald,
doddering, senile fool, whose only merit was his money.
Scarcely a fair description of Mr. Pickering, but
in a man in Bill's position a little bias is ex-
cusable.

Bill walked on. He felt as if he could walk for-
ever. Automobiles whirred past, honking peevishly, but
he heeded them not. Dogs trotted out to exchange
civilities, but he ignored them. The poison in his.
blood drove him on.

And then quite suddenly and unexpectedly the fever
passed. Almost in mid-stride he became another man,
a healed, sane man, keenly aware of a very vivid thirst
and a desire to sit down and rest before attempting the
ten miles of cement road that lay between him and
home. Half an hour at a roadhouse completed the
cure. It was a weary but clear-headed Bill who trudged
back through the gathering dusk.

He found himself thinking of Claire as of someone
he had known long ago, someone who had never touched
his life. She seemed so far away that he wondered
how she could ever have affected him for pain or pleas*
ure. He looked at her across a chasm. This is the
real difference between love and infatuation, that in-
fatuation can be slain cleanly with a single Mow. In

*06

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

the hour of clear vision which hjuT^omeToThim Bill
saw that he had never loved Claii©^ It wasvner beauty
that had held him, that and the appeal wnch her cir-
cumstances had made to his pity^TheirTEnds had not
run smoothly together. Always there*yad been some-
thing that jarred, a subtle Siragoni^l And she was
crooked* C t J

Almost unconsciously msMund began to build up
an image of the ideal girl, the girl he would have liked
Claire to be, the girl who would conform to all that
he demanded of woman. She would be brave. He re-
alized now that, even though it had moved his pity,
Claire's querulousness had offended something in him.
He had made allowances for her, but the ideal girl
would have had no need of allowances. The ideal girl
would be plucky, cheerfully valiant, a . fighter. She
would not admit the existence of hard luck.

She would be honest. Here, too, she would have no
need of allowances. No temptation would be strong
enough to make her do a mean act or think a mean
thought, for her courage would give her strength, and
her strength would make her proof against temptation.
She would be kind. That was because she would also
be extremely intelligent, and, being extremely intelli-
gent, would have need of kindness to enable her to
bear with a not very intelligent man like himself. For
the rest, she would be small and alert and pretty and

S07

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

— fair-haired — and brown-eyed — and she would keep
a bee farm and her name would be Elizabeth Boyd.

Having arrived with a sense of mild astonishment at
this conclusion, Bill found, also to his surprise, that
he had walked ten miles without knowing it and that
he was turning in at the farm gate. Somebody came
down the drive, and he saw that it was Elizabeth.

She hurried to meet him, small and shadowy in the
uncertain light. James, the cat, walked rheumatically
at her side. She came up to Bill, and he saw that
her face wore an anxious look. He gazed at her with
a curious feeling that it was a very long time since
he had seen her last.

"Where have you been?" she said, her voice troubled.
"I couldn't think what had become of you."

"I went for a walk."

"But you've been gone hours and hours."

"I went to a place called Morrisville."

"Morrisville !" Elizabeth's eyes opened wide. "Have
you walked twenty miles?"

"Why, I— I believe I have."

It was the first time he had been really conscious of
it. Elizabeth looked at him in consternation. Perhaps
it was the association in her mind of unexpected walks
with the newly born activities of the repentant Nutty
that gave her the feeling that there must be some mental
upheaval on a large scale back of this sudden ebulli-
' 208

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

tion of long-distance pedestrianism. She remembered
that the thought had come to her once or twice during
the past week that all was not well with her visitor,
and that he had seemed downcast and out of spirits.

She hesitated.

"Is anything the matter, Mr. Chalmers?"

"No," said Bill decidedly. He would have found
a difficulty in making that answer with any ring of
conviction earlier in the day, but now it was different.
There was nothing whatever the matter with him now.
He had never felt happier.

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely. I feel fine."

"I thought — Pve been thinking for some days — that
you might be in trouble of some sort."

Bill swiftly added another to that list of qualities
which he had been framing on his homeward journey.
That girl of his would, of course, be angelically sym-
pathetic.

"It's awfully good of you," he said, "but honestly I
feel like— I feel great."

The little troubled look passed from Elizabeth's
face. Her eyes twinkled.

"You're really feeling happy?"

"Tremendously."

"Then let me damp you. We're in an awful fix !"

"What! In what way?"
£09

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

*About the monkey ."

"Has he escaped ?"

"That's the trouble— he hasn't."

"I don't understand/'

"Come and sit down and I'll tell you. It's a shame
to keep you standing after your walk."

They made their way to the massive stone seat which
Mr. Flack, the landlord, had bought at a sale and
dumped in a moment of exuberance in the farm
grounds.

"This is the most hideous thing on earth," said Eliza-
beth casually, "but it will do to sit on. Now tell me,
why did you go to Lady Wetherby's this afternoon?"

It was all so remote, it seemed so long ago that he
had wanted to find an excuse for meeting Claire again,
that for a moment Bill hesitated in actual perplexity,
and before he could speak Elizabeth had answered the
question for him.

"I suppose you went out of kindness of heart to re-
lieve the poor lady's mind," she said. "But you cer-
tainly did the wrong thing. You started some-
thing!"

"But I don't understand. Of course I didn't tell her
the animal was here."

"What did you tell her?"

"I said I had seen it, don't you know,"

"That was enough."

810

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"I'm awfully sorry ."

"Oh, we shall pull through all right, but we must act
at once. We must be swift and resolute. We must
saddle our chargers and up and away, and all that sort
of thing. Show a flash of speed," she explained kindly,
at the sight of Bill's bewildered face.

"But what has happened ?"

"The press is on our trail. I've been interviewing
reporters all the afternoon."

"Reporters !"

"Millions of them. The place is alive with them.
Keen, hatchet-faced young men, and every one of them
was the man who really unraveled some murder mys-
tery or other, though the police got the credit for
it. They told me so."

"But, I say, how on earth "

" — did they get here? I suppose Lady Wetherby
invited them."

"But why?"

"She wants the advertisement, of course. I know
it doesn't sound sensational — a lost monkey ; but when
it's a celebrity's lost monkey it makes a difference.
Suppose King George had lost a monkey, wouldn't
your London newspapers give it a good deal of space?
Especially if it had thrown eggs at one of the ladies
in waiting and bitten the Duke of Norfolk in the leg?
That's what our visitor has been doing apparently.

211

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

At least he threw eggs at the scullery maid and bit a
millionaire. It's practically the same thing. At any
rate, there it is. The newspaper men are here, and
they seem to regard this farm as their center of opera-
tions. I had the greatest difficulty in inducing them
to go home to their well-earned dinners. They wanted
to camp out on the place. As it is, there may still be
some of them round, hiding in the grass with note-
books, and telling each other in whispers that they were
the men who really solved the murder mystery. What
are we going to do about it?"

Bill had no suggestions.

"You realize our position? I wonder if we could
be arrested for kidnaping? The monkey is far more
human than most of the millionaire children who get
kidnaped. It's an awful fix. Did you know that
Lady Wetherby is going to offer a reward for the
animal?"

"No, really?"

"Five hundred dollars P

"Surely not!"

"She is. I suppose she feels she can enter it to neces-
sary expenses for publicity and still be ahead of the
game, taking into account the advertising she's going
to get."

"She said nothing about that when I saw her."

"No, because it won't be offered until tomorrow or
812

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

the day after. One of the newspaper men told me
that. The idea is, of course, to make the thing ex-
citing just when it would otherwise be dying as a news
item. Cumulative interest. It's a good scheme, too,
but it makes it very awkward for me. I don't want
to be in the position of keeping a monkey locked up
with the idea of waiting until somebody starts a bull
market in monkeys. I consider that that sort of thing
would stain the spotless escutcheon of the Boyds. It
would be a low trick for that old established family
to play. Not but what poor dear Nutty would do it
like a shot," she concluded meditatively.

Bill was impressed.

"It does make it awkward, what?"

"It makes it more than awkward, what! Take an-
other aspect of the situation. The night before last
my precious Nutty, while ruining his constitution with
the demon rum, thought he saw a monkey that wasn't
there and instantly resolved to lead a new and better
life. He hates walking, but he has now begun to do
his five miles a day. He loathes cold baths, but he
now wallows in them. I don't know his views on In-
dian clubs, but I should think that he has a strong
prejudice against them, too, but now you can't go
near him without being brained. Are all these good
things to stop as quickly as they began? If I know
Nutty, he would drop them exactly one minute after

813

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

he heard that it was a real monkey he saw that night.
And how are we to prevent his hearing? By a merci-
ful miracle he was out taking his walk when the news-
paper men began to infest the place today, but that
might not happen another time. What conclusion does
all this suggest to you, Mr. Chalmers?"

"We ought to get rid of the animal."

"We certainly ought. And not take it back and
leave it at the front door either. We must take it as
near Lady Wetherby's house as we can manage with
safety, and then trust to its homing instincts."

"We'd better do it tonight."

"This very minute. But don't you bother to come.
You must be tired out, poor thing."

"I never felt less tired," said Bill stoutly.

Elizabeth looked at him in silence for a moment.

"You're rather splendid, you know, Mr. Chalmers.
You make a great partner for an adventure of this
kind. You're nice and solid."

The outhouse lay in the neighborhood of the hives,
a gaunt, wooden structure surrounded by bushes. Eliz-
abeth glanced over her shoulder as she drew the key
from her pocket.

"You can't think how nervous I was this afternoon,"
she said. "I thought every moment one of those news-
paper men would look in here. I — James ! James ! I
thought I heard James in those bushes — I kept head-

814

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

ing them away. Once I thought it was all up." She
unlocked the door. "One of them was about a yard
from the window, just going to look in. Thank good*
ness, a bee stung him at the psychological moment, and

— ohr

"What's the matter?"

"Come and get a banana."

They walked to the house. On the way Elizabeth
stopped.

"Why, you haven't had any dinner either !" she said.

"Never mind me," said Bill, "I can wait. Let's get
this thing finished first."

"You really are a sport, Mr. Chalmers," said Eliza-
beth gratefully. "It would kill me to wait a minute.
I shan't feel happy until I've got it over. Will you
stay here while I go up and see that Nutty's safe in
his room," she added, as they entered the house.
"We don't want him strolling out in the middle of
it."

She stopped abruptly. A feline howl had broken
the stillness of the night, followed instantly by a sharp
report.

"What was that?"

"It sounded like a car backfiring."

"No, it was a shot. One of the neighbors, I expect.
You can hear miles away on a night like this. I sup-
pose a cat was after his chickens. Thank goodness,

215

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

James isn't a pirate cat. Wait while I go up and see
Nutty."

She was gone only a moment.

"It's all right," she said. "I peeped in. He's doing
deep-breathing exercises at his window, which looks out
the other way. Come along."

When they reached the outhouse they found the door
open.

"Did you do that?" said Elizabeth.

"No."

"I don't remember doing it myself. It must have
swung open. Well, this saves us a walk. He'll have
gone."

"Better take a look round, what?"

"Yes, I suppose so, but he's sure not to be there.
Have you a match?"

Bill struck one and held it up.

"Good Lord!"

The match went out.

"What is it? What has happened?"

Bill was fumbling for another match.

"There's something on the floor. It looks like — I
thought for a minute "

The small flame shot out of the gloom, flickered,
then burned with a steady glow. Bill stooped, bending
over something on the ground. The match burned
down.

216

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Bill's voice came out of the darkness.

"I say, you were right about that noise. It was a
shot. The poor little chap's down there on the floor
with a hole in him the size of my fi^st."

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

xvn

BOYHOOD, like measles, is one of those complaints
which a man should catch young and have done
with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be
serious. Dudley Pickering had escaped boyhood at
the time when his contemporaries were contracting it.
It is true that for a few years after leaving the cradle
he had exhibited a certain immatureness, but as soon
as he put on knickerbockers and began to go about
a little he outgrew all that. He avoided altogether
the chaotic period which usually lies between the years
of ten and fourteen. At ten he was a thoughtful and
sober-minded young man, at fourteen almost an old
fogy. A love of machinery, developing early, helped
the steadying process. While other boys were break-
ing windows or laying the foundations for home runs
and flying tackles that would afterward enable them
to pass with credit through college, Dudley Pickering
was scrutinizing engines, studying textbooks, talking
on terms of grave equality with mechanicians.

And now — thirty-odd years overdue — boyhood had
come upon him. As he examined the revolver in his
bedroom wild and unfamiliar emotions seethed within
him. He did not realize it, but they were the emo-

218

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

tions which should have come to him thirty years
before and driven him out to hunt Indians in the garden.
An imagination which might well have become atrophied
through disuse had him as thoroughly in its control as
ever he had had his Pickering Giant.

He believed almost with devoutness in the plot which
he had detected for the spoliation of Lord Wetherby's
summer home, that plot of which he held Lord Dawlish
to be the mainspring. And it must be admitted that
circumstances had combined to help his belief. If
the atmosphere in which he was moving was not sin-
ister then there was no meaning in the word.

Summer homes had been burgled, there was no get-
ting away from that — half a dozen at least in the past
two months. He was a stranger in the locality, so
had no means of knowing that summer homes were
always burgled on Long Island every year, as regu-
larly as the coming of the mosquito and the advent
of the jellyfish. It was one of the local industries.
People left summer homes lying about loose in lonely
spots, and you just naturally got in through the cel-
lar window. Such was the Long Islander's simple
creed.

This created in Mr. Pickering's mind an atmosphere
of burglary, a receptiveness, as it were, toward bur-
glars as phenomena, and the extremely peculiar be-
havior of the person whom in his thoughts he always

219

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

referred to as The Man crystallized it. He had seen
The Man hanging about, peering in at windows. He
had shouted "Hi!" and The Man had run. The Man
had got into the house under the pretense of being
a frienct of Claire's. At the suggestion that he should
meet Claire he had dashed away in a panic. And Claire,
both then and later, had denied absolutely any knowl-
edge of him.

As for the apparently blameless beekeeping that was
going on at the place where he lived, that was easily
discounted. Mr. Pickering had heard somewhere or
read somewhere — he rather thought that it was in those
interesting but disturbing chronicles of Raffles — that
the first thing an intelligent burglar did was to assume
some open and innocent occupation to avert possible
inquiry into his real mode of life. Mr. Pickering did
not put it so to himself, for he was rarely slangy
even in thought, but what he felt was that he had caught
The Man and his confederate with the goods. He had
it on them.

If Mr. Pickering had had his boyhood at the proper
time and finished with it, he would no doubt have
acted otherwise than he did. He would have contented
himself with conducting a war of defense. He would
have notified the police, and considered that all that
remained for him personally to do was to stay in his
room at night with his revolver. But boys will be boys.

£20

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

The only course that seemed to him in any way satis-
factory in this his hour of rejuvenation was to visit
the bee farm, the hotbed of crime, and keep an eye on
it. He wanted to go there and prowl.

He did not anticipate any definite outcome of his
visit. In his boyish, elemental way he just wanted to
take a revolver, and a pocketful of cartridges, and
prowl.

It was a great night for prowling. A moon, so little
less than full that the eye could barely detect its slight
tendency to become concave, shone serenely, creating
a desirable combination of black shadows where the
prowler might hide, and great stretches of light in
which the prowler might reveal his wickedness without
disguise. Mr. Pickering walked briskly along the road,
then less briskly as he drew nearer the farm. An
opportune belt of shrubs that ran from the gate ad-
joining the road to a point not far from the house
gave him just the cover he needed. He slipped into his
belt of shrubs and began to work his way through
them.

Like generals, authors, artists and others who, after
planning broad effects, have to get down to the de-
tail work, he found that this was where his troubles
began. He had conceived the journey through the
shrubbery in rather an airy mood. He thought he
would just go through the shrubbery. He had not taken

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

into account the branches, the thorns, the occasional
unexpected holes, and he was both warm and disheveled
when be reached the end of it and found himself oat
in the open within a short distance of what he recog-
nized as beehives. It was not for some time that he
was able to give that selfless attention to exterior
objects which is the prowler's chief asset. For quite
a while the only thought of which he was conscious
was that what he needed most was a cold drink and
a cold bath. Then, with a return to clear-headedness,
he realized that he was standing out in the open, visible
from three sides to anyone who might be in the vicinity,
and he withdrew into the shrubbery. He was not fond
of the shrubbery, but it was a splendid place to with-
draw into. It swallowed you up.

This was the last move of the first part of Mr. Pick-
ering's active campaign. He stayed where he was, in
the middle of a bush, and waited for the enemy to do
something. What he expected him to do he did not
know. The subconscious thought that animated him
was that on a night like this something was bound
to happen sooner or later. Just such a thought on
similarly stimulating nights had animated men of his
acquaintance thirty years ago, men who were as el-
derly and stolid and unadventurous now as Mr. Picker-
ing had been then. He would have resented the sug-
gestion profoundly, but the truth of the matter was

%%%

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

that Dudley Pickering, after a late start, had begun
to play Indians.

Nothing happened for a long time — for such a long
time that, in spite of the ferment within him, Mr. Pick-
ering almost began to believe that nothing would hap-
pen. The moon shone with unutterable calm. The
crickets and the tree frogs performed their interminable
duet, apparently unconscious that they were attacking
it in different keys — a fact that, after a while, began
to infuriate Mr. Pickering. Mosquitoes added their
reedy tenor to the concert. A twig on which he was
standing snapped with a report like a pistol. The moon
went on shining.

Away in the distance a dog began to howl. An au-
tomobile passed in the road. For a few moments Mr.
Pickering was able to occupy himself pleasantly with
speculations as to its make ; and then he became aware
that something was walking down the back of his neck
just beyond the point where his fingers could reach it.
Discomfort enveloped Mr. Pickering. At various
times by day he had seen long-winged black creatures
with slim waists and unpleasant faces. Could it be one
of these? Or a caterpillar? Or — and the maddening
thing was that he did not dare to slap at it, for who
knew what desperate characters the sound might not
attract.

Well, it wasn't stinging him, that was something.
*«8

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

A second howling dog joined the first one. A wave
of sadness was apparently afflicting the canine popu-
lation of the district tonight. Mr. Pickering's vi-
tality began to ebb. He was aging, and imagination
slackened its grip. And then, just as he had begun
to contemplate the possibility of abandoning the whole
adventure and returning home, he was jerked back to
boyhood again by the sound of voices.

He shrank farther into the bushes. A man —
The Man — was approaching, accompanied by his fe-
male associate. They passed so close to him that
he could have stretched out a hand and touched
them.

The female associate was speaking, and her first
words set all Mr. Pickering's suspicions dancing a
dance of triumph. As has been said, he was a man
who rarely thought in slang, but if he had been, he
would have told himself at that moment that he had
had the right dope. The girl gave herself away with
her opening sentence.

"You can't think how nervous I was this after-
noon," he heard her say. She had a soft pleasant
voice; but soft pleasant voices may be the vehicles
for conveying criminal thoughts. "I thought every
moment one of those newspaper men would look in
here."

Where was here? Ah, that outhouse ! Mr. Pickering
824

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

had had his suspicions of that outhouse already. It
was one of those structures that look at you furtively
as if something were hiding in them.

"James ! James ! I thought I heard James in those
bushes."

The girl was looking straight at the spot occupied
by Mr. Pickering, and it had been the start caused
by her first words, and the resultant rustle of branches,
that had directed her attention to him. He froze.
The danger passed. She went on speaking. Mr.
Pickering pondered on James. Who was James? An-
other of the gang, of course. How many of them
were there?

"Once I thought it was all up. One of them was
about a yard from the window, just going to look in."

Mr. Pickering thrilled. There was something hid-
den in the outhouse, then! Swag?

"Thank goodness, a bee stung him at the psycho-
logical moment, and — Oh!"

She stopped and The Man spoke:

"What's the matter?"

It interested Mr. Pickering that The Man retained
his English accent fcven when talking privately with
his associates. For practice, no doubt.

"Come and get a banana," said the girl. And they
went off together in the direction of the house, leaving
Mr. Pickering bewildered. Why a banana? Was it a

225

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

slang term of the underworld for a pistol? It must
be that.

But he had no time for speculation. Now was his
chance, the only chance he would ever get of looking
into that outhouse and finding out its mysterious con-
tents. He had seen the girl unlock the door. A few
steps would take him there. All it needed was nerve.
With a strong effort Mr. Pickering succeeded in ob-
taining the nerve. He burst from his bush and trotted
to the outhouse door, opened it and looked in. And
at that moment something touched his leg.

At the right time and in the right frame of mind man
is capable of stoic endurances that excite wonder and
admiration. Mr. Pickering was no weakling. He had
once upset his automobile in a ditch, and had waited
for twenty minutes until help came to relieve a broken
arm, and he had done it without a murmur. But on
the present occasion there was a difference. His mind
was not adjusted for the occurrence. There are times
when it is unseasonable to touch a man on the leg. This
was a moment when it was unseasonable in the case of
Mr. Pickering. He bounded silently into the air, his
whole being rent asunder as by a cataclysm.

He had been holding his revolver in his hand, as a
protection against nameless terrors, and as he leaped
he pulled the trigger. Then with the automatic in-
stinct for self-preservation he sprang back into the

3*6

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

bushes, and began to push his way through them until
he had reached a safe distance from the danger zone.
James, the cat, meanwhile, hurt at the manner in
which his friendly move had been received, had taken
refuge on the outhouse roof. He mewed complainingly,
a puzzled note in his voice. Mr. Pickering's behavior
had been one of those things that no fellow can un-
derstand. The whole thing seemed inexplicable to
James.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

xvm

LORD DAWLISH stood in the doorway of the out-
house, holding the body of Eustace gingerly by
the tail. It was a solemn moment. There was no room
for doubt as to the completeness of the extinction of
Lady Wetherby's pet. Dudley Pickering's bullet had
done its lethal work. Eustace's adventurous career
was over. He was through.

Elizabeth's mouth was trembling and she looked very
white in the moonlight. Being naturally soft-hearted,
she deplored the tragedy for its own sake ; and she was
also, though not lacking in courage, decidedly upset
by the discovery that some person unknown had been
roaming her premises with a firearm.

"Oh, BUI!" she said. Then: "Poor little chap!"
And then: "Who could have done it?"

Lord Dawlish did not answer. His whole mind was
occupied at the moment with the contemplation of
the fact that she had called him Bill. Then he realized
that she had spoken three times and expected a reply.

"Who could have done it?"

Bill pondered. Never a quick thinker, the question
found him unprepared.

"Some fellow, I expect," he said at last brightly.
S*8

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Got in, don't you know, and then his pistol went
off by accident."

"But what was he doing with a pistol?"

Bill looked a little puzzled at this.

"Why, he would have a pistol, wouldn't he? I
thought everybody had over here."

Except for what he had been able to observe during
the brief period of his present visit, Lord Dawlish's
knowledge of the United States had been derived from
the American plays which he had seen in London,
and in these chappies were producing revolvers all
the time. He had got the impression that a revolver
was as much a part of the ordinary, well-dressed man's
equipment in the United States as a collar.

"I think it was a burglar," said Elizabeth. "There
have been a lot of burglaries down here this sum-
mer."

"Would a burglar burgle the outhouse? Rummy
idea, rather, what? Not much sense in it. I think it
must have been a tramp. I expect tramps are always
popping about and nosing into all sorts of extraordi-
nary places, you know."

"He must have been standing quite close to us while
we were talking," said Elizabeth with a shiver.

Bill looked about him. Everywhere was peace. No
sinister sounds competed with the creaking of the tree
frogs. No alien figures infested the landscape. The

2S9

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

only alien figure, that of Mr. Pickering, was wedged
into a btph, invisible to the naked eye.

"He's gone now, at any rate," he said. "What are
we going to do?"

Elizabeth gave another shiver as she glanced hur-
riedly at the deceased. After life's fitful fever Eustace
slept well, but he was not looking his best.

"With— it?" she said.

"I say," advised Bill, "I shouldn't call him 'it,' don't
you know. It sort of rubs it in. Why not *him'?
I suppose we had better bury him. Have you a spade
anywhere handy?"

"There isn't a spade in the place."

Bill looked thoughtful.

"It takes weeks to make a hole with anything else,
you know," he said. "When I was a kid a friend of
mine bet me I wouldn't dig my way through to China
with a pocket knife. It was an awful frost. I tried
for a couple of days, and broke the knife and didn't
get anywhere near China." He laid the remains on
the grass and surveyed them meditatively. "This is
what fellows always run up against in the detective
novels — what to do with the body. They manage
the murder part of it all right, and then stub their
toes on the body problem."

"I wish you wouldn't talk as if we had done a
murder."

S30

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"I feel as if we had, don't you?"

"Exactly."

"I read a story once where a fellow slugged some-
body and melted the corpse down in a bathtub with
sulphuric "

"Stop ! You're making me sick P'

"Only a suggestion, don't you know," said Bill
apologetically.

"Well, suggest something else then."

"How about leaving him on Lady Wetherby's door-
step? See what I mean — let them take him in with
the morning milk? Or, if you would rather, ring the
bell and go away and — you don't think much of it?"

"I simply haven't the nerve to do anything so
risky."

"Oh, I would do it. There would be no need for you
to come."

"I wouldn't dream of deserting you."

"That's awfully good of you."

"Besides, I'm not going to be left alone tonight
until I can jump into my little white bed and pull
the clothes over my head. I'm scared. I'm just bone-
less with fright. And I wouldn't go anywhere near
Lady Wetherby's doorstep with it."

"Him."

"It's no use, I can't think of it as him. It's no good
asking me to."

881

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Bill frowned thoughtfully.

"I read a story once where two chappies wanted to
get rid of a body. They put it inside a fellow's piano."

"You do seem to have read the most horrible sort of
books."

"I rather like a bit of blood with my fiction," said
Bill. "What about this piano scheme?"

"People only have talking machines in these parts."

"I read a story "

"Let's try to forget the stories you've read. Sug-
gest something of your own."

"Well, could we dissect the little chap?"

'Dissect him?"

"And bury him in the cellar, you know. Fellows do
it to their wives."

Elizabeth shuddered.

"Try again," she said.

"Well, the only other thing I can think of is to
take him into the woods and leave him there. It's a
pity we can't let Lady Wetherby know where he is,
she seems rather keen on him* But I suppose the main
point is to get rid of him."

"I know how we can do both. That's a good idea
of yours about the woods. They are part of Lady
Wetherby's property. I used to wander about there
in the spring when the house was empty. There's a
sort of shack in the middle of them. I shouldn't think

288

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

anybody ever went there — it's a deserted sort of place.
We could leave him there, and then — well, we might
write Lady Wetherby a letter or something. We could
think out that part afterward."

"It's the best thing we've thought of. You really
want to come?"

"If you attempt to leave here without me I shall
scream. Let's be starting."

Bill picked Eustace up by his convenient tail.

"I read a story once," he said, "where a fellow
was lugging a corpse through a wood, when sudden-
ly "

"Stop right there," said Elizabeth firmly.

During the conversation just recorded Dudley Pick-
ering had been keeping a watchful eye on Bill and
Elizabeth from the interior of a bush. His was not the
ideal position for espionage, for he was too far off
to hear what they said and the light was too dim to
enable him to see what it was that Bill was holding.
It looked to Mr. Pickering like a sack or bag of some
sort. As time went by he became convinced that it was
a sack, limp and empty at present but destined later to
receive and bulge with what he believed was technically
known as the swag. When the two objects of his vigi-
lance concluded their lengthy consultation and moved
off in the direction of Lady Wetherby's woods, any
doubts he may have had as to whether they were the

883

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

criminals he had suspected them of being were dis-
persed. The whole thing worked out logically.

The Man, having spied out the land in his two visits
to Lady Wetherby's house, was now about to break
in. His accomplice would stand by with the sack.
With a beating heart Mr. Pickering gripped his re-
volver and moved round in the shadow of the shrub-
bery till he came to the gate, when he was just in time
to see the guilty couple disappear into the woods.
He followed them. He was glad to get on the move
again. While he had been wedged into the bush quite
a lot of the bush had been wedged into him. Some-
thing sharp had pressed against the calf of his leg
and he had been pinched in a number of tender places.
And he was convinced that one more of God's unpleas-
ant creatures had got down the back of his neck.

Dudley Pickering moved through the wood as snak-
ily as he could. Nature had shaped him more for
stability than for snakiness, but he did his best. He
tingled with the excitement of the chase, and endeav-
ored to creep through the undergrowth like one of
those intelligent Indians of whom he had read so many
years before in the pages of Mr. Fenimore Cooper. In
those days Dudley Pickering had not thought very
highly of Fenimore Cooper, holding his work deficient
in serious and scientific interest; but now it seemed to
him that there had been something in the man after

234

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

all, and he resolved to get some of his books and go
over them again. He wished he had read them more
carefully at the time, for they doubtless contained
much information and many hints which would have
come in handy just now. He seemed, for example, to
recall characters in them who had the knack of go-
ing through forests without letting a single twig crack
beneath their feet. Probably the author had told you
how this was done. In his unenlightened state it was
beyond Mr. Pickering. The wood seemed carpeted with
twigs. Whenever he stepped he trod on one and when-
ever he trod on one it cracked beneath his feet. There
were moments when he felt gloomily that he might
just as well be firing a machine gun.

Bill, meanwhile, Elizabeth following close behind him,
was plowing his way onward. From time to time he
would turn to administer some encQuraging remark,
for it had come home to him by now that encouraging
remarks were what she needed very much in the pres-
ent crisis of her affairs. She was showing him a new
and hitherto unsuspected side of her character. The
Elizabeth whom he had known — the valiant, self-reliant
Elizabeth — had gone, leaving in her stead someone
softer, mow appealing, more approachable. It was
this that was filling him with strange emotions as he
led the way to their destination.

He was becoming more and more conscious of a
£S5

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

sense of being drawn very near to Elizabeth, of a
desire to soothe, comfort and protect her. It was
as if tonight he had discovered the missing key to a
puzzle or the missing element in some chemical combi-
nation. Like most big men, his mind was essentially
a protective mind; weakness drew out the best that
was in him. And it was only tonight that Elizabeth
had given any sign of having any weakness in her
composition. That clear vision which had come to him
on his long walk came again now, that vivid conviction
that she was the only girl in the world for him.

He was debating within himself the advisability of
trying to find words to express this sentiment, when Mr.
Pickering, the modern Chingachgook, trod on another
twig in the background and Elizabeth stopped abruptly
with a little cry.

"What was that?" she demanded breathlessly.

Bill had heard a noise too. It was impossible to
be within a dozen yards of Mr. Pickering, when on the
trail, and not hear a noise. The suspicion that some-
one was following them did not come to him, for he
was a man rather of common sense than of imagina-
tion, and common sense was asking him bluntly why
the deuce anybody should want to tramp after them
through a wood at that time of night. He caught the
note of panic in Elizabeth's voice, and was soothing
her.

286

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"It was just a branch breaking. You hear all sorts
of rum noises in a wood.'1

"I believe it's the man with the pistol following
us!"

"Nonsense. Why should he? Silly thing to do!"

He spoke almost severely.

"Look!" cried Elizabeth.

"What?"

"I saw someone dodge behind that tree."

"You mustn't let yourself imagine things. Buck
up!"

"I can't buck up. I'm scared."

"Pull yourself together."

"I can't."

"Which tree did you think you saw someone dodge
behind?"

"That big one there."

"Well, listen. I'll go back and "

"If you leave me for an instant I shall (lie in
agonies." She gulped. "I never knew I was such an
awful coward before. I'm just a worm."

"Nonsense. This sort of thing might frighten any-
one. I read a story once "

"Don't!"

Bill found that his heart had suddenly begun to beat
with unaccustomed rapidity. The desire to soothe,
comfort and protect Elizabeth became the immediate

SS7

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

ambition of his life. It was very dark where they
stood. The moonlight which fell in little patches round
them did not penetrate the thicket which they had en-
tered. He could hardly see her. He was merely aware
of her as a presence, an appealing and feminine
presence.

An excellent idea occurred to him.

"Sold my hand," he said.

It was what he would have said to a frightened child,
and there was much of the frightened child about Eliza-
beth then. The Eustace mystery had given her a
shock which subsequent events had done nothing to
dispel, and she had lost that jauntiness and self-
confidence which was her natural armor against the
more ordinary happenings of life.

Something small and soft slid gratefully into his
palm, and there was silence for a space. Bill said
nothing. Elizabeth said nothing. And Mr. Pickering
had stopped treading on twigs. The faintest of night
breezes ruffled the treetops above them. The moon-
beams filtered through the branches. He held her
hand tightly.

"Better?"

"Much."

The breeze died away. Not a leaf stirred. The
wood was very still. Somewhere on a bough a bird
moved drowsily.

£88

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"All right?"

"Yes."

And then something happened, something shattering,
disintegrating. It was only a pheasant, but it sounded
like the end of the world. It rose at their feet with
a rattle that filled the universe, and for a moment
all was black confusion. And when that moment had
passed it became apparent to Bill that his arm was
round Elizabeth, that she was sobbing helplessly and
that he was kissing her. Somebody was talking very
rapidly in a low voice. The fellow seemed to be
babbling.

He found that it was himself.

"Elizabeth!"

There was something wonderful about the name, a
sort of music. This was odd, because the name, as a
name, was far from being a favorite of his. Until that
moment childish associations had prejudiced him
against it. It had been inextricably involved in his
mind with an atmosphere of stuffy schoolrooms and
general misery, for it had been his misfortune that his
budding mind was constitutionally incapable of remem-
bering who had been queen of England at the time of
the Spanish Armada — a fact that had caused a good
deal of friction with a rather sharp-tempered govern-
ess. But now it seemed the only possible name for
a girl to have, the only label that could even remotely

£39

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money.

suggest those feminine charms which he found in this
girl beside him. There was poetry in every syllable
of it. It was like one of those deep chords which fill
the hearer with vague yearnings for strange and beau-
tiful things. He asked for nothing better than to stand
here repeating it again and again.

"Elizabeth !"

"Bill, dear!"

That sounded good too. There was music in "Bill"
when properly spoken. The reason why all the other
Bills in the world had got the impression that it was
a prosaic sort of name was that there was only one
girl in existence capable of speaking it properly, and
she was not for them.

"Bill, are you really fond of me?"

"Fond of you!"

Elizabeth gave a little sigh.

"You're so splendid !"

Bill was staggered. These were strange words. He
had never thought much of himself. He had always
looked on himself as rather a chump — well-meaning,
perhaps, but an awful ass. It seemed incredible that
anyone — and Elizabeth of all people — could look on
him as splendid.

And yet the very fact that she had said it gave it
a plausible sort of sound. It shook his convictions.
Splendid! Was he? By Jove, perhaps he was, what?

£40

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Bum idea, but it grew on a chap. Filled with a novel
feeling of exaltation, he kissed Elizabeth eleven times
in rapid succession.

He felt devilish fit. He would have liked to run a
mile or two and jump a few gates. He wished five
or six starving beggars would come along; it would be
pleasant to give the poor blighters money. It was too
much to expect at that time of night, of course, but it
would be rather jolly if Jess Willard or somebody
would roll up and try to pick a quarrel. He would
show them something. He felt grand and strong and
full of beans. What a ripping thing life was when
you came to think of it!

"This," he said, "is perfectly extraordinary l"

And time stood still.

A sense of something incongruous jarred upon Bill.
Something seemed to be interfering with the supreme
romance of that golden moment. It baffled him at first.
Then he realized that he was still holding Eustace
by the tail.

Dudley Pickering had watched these proceedings —
as well as the fact that it was extremely dark and that
he was endeavoring to hide a portly form behind a
slender bush would permit him — with a sense of bewil-
derment. A comic artist, drawing Mr. Pickering at
that moment, would no doubt have placed above his
bead one of those large marks of interrogation which

241

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

lend vigor and snap to modern comic art. Certainly
such a mark of interrogation would have summed up
his feelings exactly. Of what was taking place he had
riot the remotest notion. All he knew was that for some
inexplicable reason his quarry had come to a halt and
seemed to have settled down for an indefinite stay.
Voices came to him in an indistinguishable murmur,
intensely irritating to a conscientious tracker. One
of Fenimore Cooper's Indians — notably Chingachgook,
if, which seemed incredible, that was really the man's
name — would have crept up without a sound and heard
what was being said and got in on the ground floor of
whatever plot was being hatched. But experience had
taught Mr. Pickering that, superior as he was to Chin-
gachgook and his friends in many ways, as a creeper he
was not in their class. He weighed thirty or forty
pounds more than a first-class creeper should. Besides,
creeping is like golf. You can't take it up in the
middle forties and expect to compete with those who
have been at it from infancy.

He had resigned himself to an all-night vigil behind
the bush, when to his great delight he perceived that
things had begun to move again. There was a rustling
of feet in the undergrowth, and he could just see two
indistinct forms making their way among the bushes.
He came out of his hiding place and followed stealth-
ily, or as stealthily as the fact that he had not even

£4*

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

taken a correspondence course in creeping allowed.
And profiting by earlier mistakes, he did succeed in
making far less noise than before. In place of his
former somewhat elephantine method of progression
he adopted a species of shuffle which had excellent re-
sults, for it enabled him to brush twigs away instead
of stepping flat-footedly on them. The new method
was slow, but it had no other disadvantages.

Because it was slow Mr. Pickering was obliged to
follow his prey almost entirely by ear. It was easy
at first, for they seemed to be hurrying on regardless
of noise. Then unexpectedly the sounds of their pas-
sage ceased.

He halted. In his boyish way the first thing he
thought was that it was an ambush. He had a vision
of that large man suspecting his presence and lying
in wait for him with a revolver. This was not a com-
forting thought. Of course, if a man is going to fire
a revolver at you it makes little difference whether
he is a giant or a pygmy, but Mr. Pickering was in no
frame of mind for nice reasoning. It was the thought
of Bill's physique which kept him standing there
irresolute.

What would Chingachgook — assuming, for purposes
of argument, that any sane godfather could really
have given a helpless child a name like that — have
done? He would, Mr. Pickering considered, after giv-

243

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

ing the matter his earnest attention, have made a de-
tour and outflanked the enemy. An excellent solution
of the difficulty. Mr. Pickering turned to the left and
began to advance circuitously, with the result that,
before he knew what he was doing, he came out into
a clearing and understood the meaning of the sudden
silence which had perplexed him. Footsteps made no
sound on this mossy turf.

He knew where he was now, the clearing was familiar.
This was where Lord Wetherby's shack studio stood;
and there it was, right in front of him, black and clear
in the moonlight. And the two dark figures were go-
ing into it.

Mr. Pickering retreated into the shelter of the bushes
and mused upon this thing. It seemed to him that
for centuries he had been doing nothing but retreat into
bushes for this purpose. His perplexity had returned.
He could imagine no reason why burglars should want
to visit Lord Wetherby's studio. He had taken it for
granted, when he had tracked them to the clearing,
that they were on their way to the house, which was
quite close to the shack, separated from it only by
a thin belt of trees and a lawn.

They had certainly gone in. He had seen them with
his own eyes — first The Man, then very close behind
him, apparently holding to his coat, the girl. But
why?

*44

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Creep up and watch them? Would Chingachgook
have taken a risk like that? Hardly, unless insured
with some good company. Then what? He was still
undecided when he perceived the objects of his attention
emerging. He backed a little farther into the bushes.

They stood for an instant, listening apparently.
The Man no longer carried the sack. They exchanged
a few inaudible words. Then they crossed the clearing
and entered the wood a few yards to his right. He could
hear the crackling of their footsteps diminishing in
the direction of the road.

A devouring curiosity seized upon Mr. Pickering.
He wanted, more than he had wanted almost any-
thing before in his life, to find out what the dickens
they had been up to in there. He listened. The foot-
steps were no longer audible. He ran across the
clearing and into the shack. It was then that he dis-
covered that he had no matches.

This needless infliction, coming upon him at the
crisis of an adventurous night, infuriated Mr. Pick-
ering. He swore softly. He groped round the walls
for an electric-light switch, but the shack had no elec-
tric-light switches. When there was need to illumi-
nate it an oil lamp performed the duty. This oc-
curred to Mr. Pickering after he had been round the
place three times, and he ceased to grope for switches
and began to seek a matchbox. He was still seeking

245

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

it when he was frozen in his tracks by the sound of
footsteps, muffled but by their nearness audible, just
outside the door. He pulled out his pistol, which
he had replaced in his pocket, backed against the
wall, and stood there, prepared to sell his life dearly.
The door opened.

One reads of desperate experiences aging people in
a single night. His present predicament aged Mr.
Pickering in a single minute. In the brief interval
of time between the opening of the door and the mo-
ment when a voice outside began to speak, he became
a full thirty years older. His boyish ardor slipped
from him, and he was once more the Dudley Pickering
whom the world knew, the staid and respectable mid-
dle-aged man of affairs, who would have given a mil-
lion dollars not to have got himself mixed up in this
deplorable business.

And then the voice spoke.

"I'll light the lamp," it said; and with an over-
powering feeling of relief Mr. Pickering recognized it
as Lord Wetherby's. A moment later the tempera-
mental peer's dapper figure became visible in silhouette
against a background of pale light.

"Ah-hum!" said Mr. Pickering.

The effect on Lord Wetherby was remarkable. To
hear someone clear his throat at the back of a dark
room, where there should rightfully be no throat to

846

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

be cleared, would cause even your man of stolid habit
a passing thrill. The thing got right in among Lord
Wetherby's highly sensitive ganglions like an earth-
quake. He leaped in the air with a strangled cry, then
dashed out and slammed the door behind him.

"There's someone in there P*

Lady Wetherby's tranquil voice made itself heard.

"Nonsense, who could be in there ?"

"I heard him, I tell you. He growled at me P*

It seemed to Mr. Pickering that the time had come
to relieve the mental distress which he was causing
his host. He raised his voice.

"It's all right P' he called.

"There P' said Lord Wetherby.

"Who's that?" asked Lady Wetherby through the
door.

"It's aU right. It's me— Pickering."

The door was opened a few inches by a cautious
hand.

"Is that you, Pickering?"

"Yes. It's all right."

"Don't keep saying it's all right," said Lord Weth-
erby irritably. "It isn't all right* What do you
mean by hiding in the dark and popping out and bark-
ing at a man? You made me bite my tongue. I've
never had such a shock in my life."

Mr. Pickering left his lair and came out into the
847

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

open. Lord Wetherby was looking aggrieved, Ladj
Wetherby peacefully inquisitive. For the first time
Mr. Pickering discovered that Claire was present. She
was standing behind Lady Wetherby with a floating
white something over her head, looking very beautiful.

"For the love of Mike !" said Lady Wetherby.

Mr. Pickering became aware that he was still holding
the revolver.

"Oh, ah!" he said, % and trousered the weapon.

"Barking at people !" muttered Lord Wetherby in
a querulous undertone.

"What on earth are you doing, Dudley?" said
Claire.

There was a note in her voice which both puzzled
and pained Mr. Pickering, a note that seemed to sug-
gest that she found herself in imperfect sympathy
with him. Her expression deepened the suggestion.
It was a cold expression, unfriendly, as if it was not
so keen a pleasure to Claire to look at him as it should
be for a girl to look at the man whom she is engaged
to marry. He had noticed the same note in her voice
and the same hostile look in her eye earlier in the
evening. He had found her alone, reading a letter,
which, as the stamp on the envelope showed, had come
from England. She had seemed so upset that he had
asked her if it contained bad news, and she had re-
plied in the negative with so much irritation that he

848

Digitized'by VjOOQIC

Uneasy Money

had desisted from inquiries. But his own idea was
that she had had bad news from home. Mr. Pickering
still clung to his early impression that her little brother
Percy was consumptive, and he thought the child must
have taken a turn for the worse. It was odd that she
should have looked and spoken like that, and it was
odd that she should look and speak like that now.
He had been vaguely disturbed then and he was vaguely
disturbed now. He had the feeling that all was not
well.

"Yes," said Lady Wetherby. "What on earth are
you doing, Dudley ?"

"Popping out!" grumbled Lord Wetherby.

"We came here to see Algie's picture, which haC
got something wrong with its eyes apparently, and we
find you hiding in the dark with a gun. What's the
idea?"

"It's a long story ," said Mr. Pickering.

"We have the night- before us," said Lady Wetherby*
"Push it out."

"You remember The Man — the fellow I found look-
ing in at the window — The Man who said he knew
Claire?"

"You've got that man on the brain, Dudley. What's
he been doing to you now?"

"I tracked him here."

"Tracked him? Where from?"
449

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"From that bee farm place where he's living. He
and that girl you spoke of went into these woods. I
thought they were making for the house, but they
went into the shack."

"Studio," said Lord Wetherby.

"Studio," said Mr. Pickering.

"What did they do then?" asked Lady Wetherby.

"They came out again."

"Why?"

"That's what I was trying to find out."

Lord Wetherby uttered an exclamation.

"By Jove?' There was apprehension in his voice,
but mingled with it a certain pleased surprise. "Per-
haps they were after my picture. I'll light the lamp.
Good Lord, picture thieves — Romneys — missing Gains-
boroughs " His voice trailed off as he found the

lamp and lit it. Relief and disappointment were nicely
blended in his next words. "No, it's still there."

The soft light of the lamp filled the studio.

"Well, that's a comfort," said Lady Wetherby,
sauntering in. "We couldn't afford to lose Oh P'

Lord Wetherby spun round as her scream burst upon
his already tortured nerve centers. Lady Wetherby
was kneeling on the floor. Claire hurried in.

"What is it, Polly?"

Lady Wetherby rose to her feet and pointed. Her
face had lost its look of patient amusement. It was

850

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

hard and get. She eyed Mr* Pickering in a menacing
way.

"Look!"

Claire followed her finger.

"Good gracious! It's Eustace!"

"Shot!"

She was looking intently at Mr. Pickering.

"Well, Dudley," she said coldly, "what about it?"

Mr. Pickering found that they were all looking at
him — Lady Wetherby with glittering eyes, Claire with
cool scorn, Lord Wetherby with a horror which he
seemed to have achieved with something of an effort.

"Well!" said Claire.

"What about it, Dudley?" said Lady Wetherby.

"I must say, Pickering," said Lord Wetherby,
"much as I disliked the animal, it's a bit thick!"

Mr. Pickering recoiled from their accusing gaze.

"Good heavens! Do you think I did it?"

In the midst of his anguish there flashed across
his mind the recollection of having seen just this sort
of situation in a moving picture and of having thought
it far-fetched.

Lady Wetherby's good-tempered mouth, far from
good-tempered now, curled in a devastating sneer.
She was looking at him as Claire, in the old days
when they had toured England together in road com-
panies, had sometimes seen her look at recalcitrant

251

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

landladies. The landladies, without exception, had
wilted beneath that gaze, and Mr. Pickering wilted
now.

"But — but — but " was all he could contrive to

•ay.

"Why should we think you did it?" said Lady Weth-
erby bitingly. "You had a grudge against the poor
brute for biting you. We find you hiding here with
a pistol and a story about burglars which an infant
couldn't swallow. I suppose you thought that, if you
planted the poor creature's body here, it would be up
to Algie to get rid of it, and that if he were found
with it I should think that it was he who had killed
the animal."

The look of horror which Lord Wetherby had man-
aged to assume became genuine at these words. The
gratitude which he had been feeling toward Mr. Pick-
ering for having removed one of the chief trials of
his existence vanished.

"Great Scott!" he cried. "So that was the game,
was it !"

Mr. Pickering struggled for speech. This was a
nightmare.

"But I didn't! I didn't! I didn't! I tell you I
hadn't the remotest notion the creature was there."

"Oh, come, Pickering!" said Lord Wetherby.
"Come, come, come!"

25£

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Mr. Pickering found that his accusers were ebbing
away. Lady Wetherby had gone. Claire had gone.
Only Lord Wetherby remained, looking at him like
a pained groom. He dashed from the place and fol-
lowed his hostess, speaking incoherently of burglars,
outhouses and misunderstandings. He even mentioned
Chingachgook. But Lady Wetherby would not listen.
Nobody would listen.

He found Lord Wetherby at his side, evidently pre-
pared to go deeper into the subject. Lord Wetherby
was looking now like a groom whose favorite horse
has kicked him in the stomach.

"Wouldn't have thought it of you, Pickering," said
Lord Wetherby. Mr. Pickering found no words.
"Wouldn't, honestly. Low trick!"

"But I teU you "

"Devilish low trick !" repeated Lord Wetherby, with
a shake of the head. "Laws of hospitality — eaten
our bread and salt, what. — all that sort of thing —
kill valuable monkey — not done, you know — low, very
low!"

And he followed his wife, now in full retreat, with
scorn and repulsion written in her very walk.

"Mr. Pickering!"

It was Claire. She stood there, holding something
toward him, something that glittered in the moon-
light. Her voice was hard, and the expression on

»5$ .

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

her face suggested that in her estimation he was a
particularly low-grade worm, one of the submerged
tenth of the worm world.

"Eh?" said Mr. Pickering dazedly.

He looked at* what she had in her hand, but it con-
veyed nothing to his overwrought mind.

"Take itr

"Eh?"

Claire stamped.

"Very weH," she said.

She flung something on the ground before him, a
small, sparkling object. Then she swept away, his
eyes following her, and was lost in the darkness of
the trees. Mechanically Mr. Pickering stooped to pick
up what she had let fall. He recognized it now. It
was her engagement ring.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

XIX

BILL leaned his back against the gate that sep-
arated the grounds of* the bee farm from the
highroad, and mused pleasantly. He was alone.
Elizabeth was walking up the drive on her way to the
house to tell the news to Nutty. James, the cat, who
had come down from the roof of the outhouse, was
sharpening his claws on a neighboring tree. After the
whirl of excitement that had been his portion for the
past few hours, the peace of it all appealed strongly to
Bill. It suited the mood of quiet happiness which
was upon him.

Quietly happy, that was how he felt now that it was
all over. The white 'heat of emotion had subsided
to a gentle glow of contentment conducive to thought.
He thought tenderly of Elizabeth. She had turned
to wave her hand before going into the house, and
he was still smiling fatuously. Wonderful girl! Lucky
chap he was! Rum, the way they had come together!
Talk about Fate, what?

He stooped to tickle James, who had finished strop-
ping his claws and was now enjoying a friction mas-
sage against his leg, and began to brood on the in-
scrutable ways of Fate.

*55

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money.

Rum thing, Fate! Most extraordinary!

Suppose he had never gone down to Marvis Bay
that time. He had wavered between half a dozen
places; it was pure chance that he had chosen Mar-
vis Bay. If he hadn't he would never have met old
Nutcombe. Probably old Nutcombe had wavered be-
tween half a dozen places too. If they hadn't both
happened to choose Marvis Bay they would never
have met. And if they hadn't been the only visitors
there they might never have got to know each other.
And if old Nutcombe hadn't happened to slice his ap-
proach shots he would never have put him under an
obligation. Queer old buster, old Nutcombe, leaving
a fellow he hardly knew from Adam a cool million quid
just because he cured him of slicing.

It was at this point in his meditations that it sud-
denly occurred to Bill that he had not yet given a
thought to what was immeasurably the most important
of any of the things that ought to be occupying his
mind just now. What was he to do about this Lord
Dawlish business?

Life at Brookport had so accustomed him to being
plain Bill Chalmers that it had absolutely slipped his
mind that he was really Lord Dawlish, the one man
in the world whom Elizabeth looked on as an enemy.
What on earth was he to do about that? cTeIl
her?

256

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

But if he told her, wouldn't she chuck him on the
spot?

This was awful. The dreamy sense of well-being
left him. He straightened himself to face this problem,
ignoring the hints' of James, who was weaving circles
about his legs expectant of more tickling. A man
cannot spend his time tickling cats when he has to con-
centrate on a dilemma of this kind.

Suppose he didn't tell her? How would that work
out? Was a marriage legal if the cove who was being
married went through it under a false name? He
seemed to remember seeing a melodrama in his boy-
hood, the plot of which turned on that very point.
Yes, it began to come back to him. An unpleasant
bargee with a black mustache had said, "This woman
is not your wife!" and caused the dickefts of a lot
of unpleasantness ; but there in its usual slipshod way
memory failed. Had subsequent events proved the
bargee right or wrong? It was a question for a law-
yer to decide. Jerry Nichols would know. Well, there
was plenty of time, thank goodness, to send Jerry
Nichols a prepaid cable, asking for his professional
opinion, and to get the straight tip long before the
wedding day arrived.

Laying this part of it aside for the moment and
assuming that the thing could be worked, what about
the money? Like a chump, he had told Elizabeth on

*57

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

the first day of his visit that he hadn't any money
except what he made out of his job of secretary of
the club. He couldn't suddenly spring five million dol-
lars on her and pretend that he had forgotten all about
it till then.

Of course he could invent an imaginary uncle or
something and massacre him during the honeymoon.
Something in that. He pictured the thing in his
mind. Breakfast. Elizabeth doing out the scram-
bled eggs. ciWhat's the matter, Bill? Why did
you exclaim like that? Is there some bad news in
the letter you are reading?" "Oh, it's nothing — only
my Uncle John's died and left me five million dol-
lars."

The scene worked out so well that his mind became
a little above itself. It suggested developments of
serpentine craftiness. Why not get Jerry Nichols
to write him a letter about his Uncle John and the
five millions? Jerry liked doing that sort of thing.
He would do it like a shot, and chuck in a lot of le-
gal words to make it sound right. It began to be
clear to Bill that any move he took — except full con-
fession, at which he jibbed — was going to involve Jerry
Nichols as an ally; and this discovery had a soothing
effect on him. It made him feel that the responsi-
bility had been shifted. He couldn't do anything till
he had consulted Jerry, so there was no use in worry-

*58

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

ing. And, being one of those rare persons who can
cease worrying instantly when they have convinced
themselves that it is useless, he dismissed the entire
problem from his mind and returned to the more con-
genial occupation of thinking of Elizabeth.

It was a peculiar feature of his position that he
found himself unable to think of Elizabeth without also
thinking of Claire. He tried to, but failed. Every
virtue in Elizabeth seemed to call up the recollection
of a corresponding defect in Claire. It became almost
mathematical. Elizabeth was so straight — on the level,
they called it over here. Claire was a corkscrew among
women. Elizabeth was sunny and cheerful. Queru-
lousness was Claire's besetting sin. Elizabeth was such
a pal. Claire had never been that. The effect that
Claire had always had on him was to deepen the con-
viction, which never really left him, that he was a
bit of an ass. Elizabeth, on the other hand, bucked
him up and made him feel as if he really amounted to
something.

How different they were! Their very voices — Eliza-
beth had a sort of quiet, soothing, pleasant voice,
the kind of voice that somehow suggested that she
thought a lot of a chap without her having to say
it in so many words. Whereas Claire's voice — he
had noticed it right from the beginning — Claire's

voice

*59

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

While he was trying to make clear to himself just
what it was about Claire's voice that he had not liked,
he was granted the opportunity of analyzing by means
of direct observation its failure to meet his vocal ideals,
£or at this moment it spoke behind him.

"Bill!"

She was standing in the road, her head still covered
with that white, filmy something which had commended
itself to Mr. Pickering's eye. She was looking at him
in a way that seemed somehow to strike a note of
appeal. She conveyed an atmosphere of softness and
repentance, a general suggestion of prodigal daughters
revisiting old homesteads.

"We seem always to be meeting at gates, don't we !"
she said with a faint smile.

It was a deprecating smile, wistful.

"Bill!" she said again, and stopped. She laid her
left hand lightly on the gate. Bill had a sort of im-
pression that there was some meaning behind this
action, that if he were less of a chump than Nature
had made him, he would at this point receive some sort
of a revelation. But being as Nature had made him,
he did not get it. He was one of those men to whom
a girl's left hand is simply a girl's left hand, irre-
spective of whether it wears rings 09 its third finger
or not.

This having become evident to Claire after a mo-
*60

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

ment of silence, she withdrew her hand in rather a dis-
appointed way and prepared to attack the situation
from another angle.

"Bill, I've come to say something to you."

Bill was looking at her curiously. He could not
have believed that, even after what had happened, he
could face her with such complete detachment, that
she could so extraordinarily not matter. He felt no
resentment toward her. It was simply that she had
gone out of his life.

"Bill, I've been a fool."

He made no reply to this, for he could think of no
reply that was sufficiently polite. "Yes?" sounded as if
he meant to say that th$t was just what he had ex-
pected. "Really?" had a sarcastic ring. He fell back
on facial expression, to imply that he was interested
and that she might tell all.

Claire looked away down the road and began to
speak in a low, quick voice.

"I've been a fool all along. I lost you through being
a fool. When I saw you dancing with that girl in
the restaurant I didn't stop to think. I was angry.

I was jealous. I ought to have trusted you, but

Oh, well, I was a fool."

"My dear girl, you had a perfect right "

"I hadn't. I was an idiot. Bill, Fve come back to
ask you if you can't forgive me."

361

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that — there's nothing
to forgive."

The look which Claire gave him in answer to this
was meek and affectionate, but inwardly she was wish-
ing that she could bang his head against the gate.
His slowness was maddening. Long before this he
should have leaped into the road in order to fold her
in his arms. Her voice shook with the effort she had
to make to keep it from sharpness.

"I mean, is it too late? I mean, can you really for-
give me? Oh, Bill" — she stopped herself by the frac-
tion of a second from adding "you idiot !" — "can't we
be the same again to each other? Can't we — pretend
all this has never happened?"

Exasperating as Bill's wooden failure to play the
scene in the spirit in which her imagination had con-
ceived it was to Claire, several excuses may be offered
for him. He had opened the evening with a shattering
blow at his faith in woman. He had walked twenty
miles at a rapid pace. He had heard shots and found
corpses and carried the latter by the tail across coun-
try. Finally he had had the stunning shock of discover-
ing that Elizabeth Boyd loved him. He was not him-
self. He found a difficulty in concentrating. With
the result that, in answer to this appeal from a beauti-
ful girl whom he had once imagined that he loved, all
he could find to say was: "How do you mean?"

862

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Claire, never an adept at patience, just succeeded
in swallowing the remark that sprang into her mind.
It was incredible to her that a man could exist who
had so little intuition. She had not anticipated the
necessity of being compelled to put the substance of
her meaning in so many blunt words, but it seemed
that only so could she make him understand.

"I mean, can't we be engaged again, Bill?9'

Bill's overtaxed brain turned one convulsive hand-
spring, and came to rest with a sense of having dis-
located itself. This was too much. This was not
right. No fellow at the end of a hard evening ought
to have to grapple with this sort of thing. What on
earth did she mean, springing questions like that on
him? How could they be engaged? She was going
to marry someone else, and so was he. Something of
these thoughts he managed to put into words:

"But you're engaged to "

"I've broken my engagement with Mr. Pickering."

"Great Scott! When?"

"Tonight. I found out his true character. He is
cruel and treacherous. Something happened — it may
sound nothing to you, but it gave me an insight into
what he really was. Polly Wetherby had a little mon-
key, and just because it bit Mr. Pickering he shot it."

"Pickering!"

"Yes. He wasn't the sort of man I should have ex-
868

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

pected to do a mean, cruel thing like that. It sickened
me. I gave him back his ring then and there. Oh, what
a relief it was! What a fool I was ever to have got
engaged to such a man!"

Bill was puzzled. He was one of those simple men
who take their fellows on trust, but who, if once that
trust is shattered, can never recover it. Like most
simple men, he was tenacious of ideas when he got
them, and the belief that Claire was crooked was not
lightly to be removed from his mind. He had found
her out during his self-communion that night, and he
could never believe her again. He had the feeling
that there was something behind what she was saying.
He could not put his finger on the clew, but that there
was a clew he was certain.

"I only got engaged to him out of pique. I was
angry with you, and — well, that's how it happened."

Still Bill could not believe. It was plausible. It
sounded true. And yet some instinct told him that
it was not true. And while he waited, perplexed,
Claire made a false step.

The thing had been so close to the top of her mind
ever since she had come to the knowledge of it that it
had been hard for her to keep it down. Now she could
keep it down no longer.

"How wonderful about old Mr. Nutcombe, B01!" she
said.

264

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

A vast relief rolled over Bill. Despite his instinct,
he had been wavering. But no* he understood. He
had found the clew.

"You got my letter, then?"

"Yes, it was forwarded on from the theater. I got
it tonight."

Too late she realized what she had said, and the
construction that an intelligent man would put on it.
Then she reflected that Bill was not an intelligent man.
She shot a swift glance at him. To all appearances
he suspected nothing.

"It went all over the place," she hurried on. "The
people at the Portsmouth theater sent it to the London
office, who sent it home, and mother mailed it on to me."

"I see."

There was a silence. Claire drew a step nearer.

"Bill!" she said softly.

Bill shut his eyes. The moment had come which he
had dreaded. Not even the thought that she was
crooked, that she had been playing with him, could
make it any better. She was a woman and he was a
man. That was all that mattered, and nothing could
alter it.

"Pm sorry," he said. "It's impossible."

Claire stared at him in amazement. She had not
been prepared for this. He met her eyes, but every
nerve in his body was protesting.

865

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Bill!"

"I'm sorry."

"But, Bill!"

He set his teeth. It was just as bad as he had
thought it would be.

"But, Bill, I've explained. I've told you how "

"I know."

Claire's eyes opened wide.

"I thought you loved me." She came closer. She
pulled at his sleeve. Her voice took on a note of soft
raillery. "Don't be absurd, Bill! You mustn't be-
have like a sulky schoolboy. It isn't like you, this.
You surely don't want me to humble myself more than
I have done." She gave a little laugh. "Why, Bill,
I'm proposing to you ! I know Pve treated you badly,
but I've explained why. You must be just enough
to see that it wasn't altogether my fault. I'm only
human. And if I made a mistake I've done all I can
to undo it. I "

"Claire, listen. I'm engaged P'

She fell back. For the first time the sense of defeat
came to her. She had anticipated many things. She
had looked for difficulties. But she had not expected
this. A feeling of cold fury surged over her at the
way Fate had tricked her. She had gambled recklessly
on her power of fascination, and she had lost. Mr.
Pickering, at that moment brooding in solitude in the

266

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money,

smoking-room of Lady Wetherby's house, would have
been relieved could he have known how wistfully she
was thinking of him.

"You're engaged?"

"Yes"

"Well!" She forced another laugh. "How very-
rapid of you ! To whom?"

"To Elizabeth Boyd."

"I'm afraid I'm very ignorant, but who is Elizabeth
Boyd? The ornate lady you were dancing with at the
restaurant?"

"No!"

"Who, then?"

"She is old Ira Nutcombe's niece. The money ought
to have been left to her. That was why I came over
to America, to see if I could do anything for her."

"And you're going to marry her? How very roman-
tic— and convenient ! What an excellent arrangement
for her. Which of you suggested it?"

Bill drew in a deep breath. All this was, he sup-
posed, unavoidable, but it was not pleasant.

Claire suddenly abandoned her pose of cool amuse-
ment. The fire behind it blazed through.

"You fool!" she cried passionately. "Are you blind?
Can't you see that this girl is simply after your money?
A child could see it."

Bill looked at her steadily.
«67

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"You're quite wrong. She doesn't know who I am."

"Doesn't know who you are? What do you mean?
She must know by this time that her uncle left his
money to you."

"But she doesn't know that I am Lord Dawlish. I
came to America under another name. She knows me
as Chalmers."

Claire was silent for a moment.

"How did you get to know her?" she asked more
quietly.

"I met her brother by chance in New York."

"By chanced

"Quite by chance. A man I knew in England lent
me his rooms in New York. He happened to be a friend
of Boyd's. Boyd came to call on him one night, and
found me."

"Odd! Had your mutual friend been away from
New York long?"

"Some months."

"And in all that time Mr. Boyd had not discovered
that he had left. They must have been great friends!
What happened then?"

"Boyd invited me down here." ,

"Down here?"

"They live in this house."

"Is Miss Boyd the girl who keeps the bee farm?"

"She is."

S68

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Claire's eyes suddenly lit up. She began to speak in
a louder voice.

"Bill, you're an infant, a perfect infant! Of course
she's after your money. Do you really imagine for
one instant that this Elizabeth Boyd of yours and
her brother don't know as well as I do that you are
really Lord Dawlish? I always thought you had a
trustful nature ! You tell me the brother met you by
chance. Chance! And invited you down here. I
bet he did! He knew his business! And now you're
going to marry the girl so that they will get the money,
after all! Splendid! Oh, Bill, you're a wonderful,
wonderful creature. Your innocence is touching."

She swung round.

"Good night," she called over her shoulder.

He could hear her laughing as she went down the
road*

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

IN the smoking-room of Lady Wetherby's house,
chewing the dead stump of a once imposing cigar,
Dudley Pickering sat alone with his thoughts. He had
been alone for half an hour now. Once Lord Weth-
erby had looked in, to withdraw at once coldly, with
the expression of a groom who has found loathsome
things in the harness room. Roscoe Sherriff, good,
easy man, who could never dislike people no matter
what they had done, had come for a while to bear
him company; but Mr. Pickerings society was not
for the time being entertaining. He had answered
with grunts the press agent's kindly attempts at con-
versation, and the latter had withdrawn to seek a
more congenial audience. And now Mr. Pickering was
alone, talking things over with his subconscious
self.

A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion.
It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark
den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt
and deride and increase the misery of a miserable
hour. Mr. Pickering's rare interviews with his sub-
conscious self had happened until now almost entirely
in the small hours of the night, when it had popped

*70

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money.

out to remind him, as he lay sleepless, that all flesh
was grass and that he was not getting any younger.
Tonight, such had been the shock of the evening**
events, it came to him at a time which was usually his
happiest, the time that lay between dinner and bed*
Mr. Pickering at that point of the day was generally
feeling his best. But tonight was different from the
other nights of his life.

One may picture Subconscious Self as a withered,
cynical, malicious person standing before Mr. Picker-
ing and regarding him with an evil smile. There has
been a pause, and now Subconscious Self speaks again.

"You'll have to leave tomorrow. Couldn't possibly
stop on after what's happened. Now you see what
comes of behaving like a boy."

Mr. Pickering writhed.

"Made a pretty considerable fool of yourself, didn't
you, with your revolvers and your hidings and your
trailings? Too old for that sort of thing, you know.
You're getting on. Probably have a touch of lumbago
tomorrow. You must remember you aren't a youngster.
Grot to take care of yourself. Next time you feel an
impulse to hide in shrubberies and take moonlight
walks through damp woods, perhaps you will listen
to me."

Mr. Pickering relit the stump of his cigar defiantly
and smoked in long gulps for a while. He was trying

«71

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

to persuade himself that all this was untrue, but it
was pot easy. The cigar became uncomfortably hot,
and he threw it away. He fumbled in his waistcoat
pocket and produced a diamond ring, at which he
looked pensively.

"A pretty thing, is it not?" said Subconscious Self,
like a disembodied Eddie Foy.

Mr. Pickering sighed. That moment when Claire
had thrown the ring at his feet and swept out of his
life like an offended queen had been the culminating
blow of a night of blows, the knockout following on
a series of minor punches. Subconscious Self seized
the opportunity to become offensive again.

"You've lost her, all through your own silly fault,"
it said, discarding Eddie Foy and adopting in prefer-
ence the conversational methods of the late Bildad
the Shuhite. "How on earth you can have been such
a perfect fool beats me. Running round with a gun
like a boy of fourteen! Well, it's done now and it
can't be mended. Countermand the order for cake,
send a wire putting off the minister, dismiss the brides-
maids, tell the organist he can stop practicing The
Voice That Breathed O'er Eden — no wedding bells
for you. For Dudley Damfool Pickering, Esquire, the
lonely hearth forevermore. Little feet pattering
about the house? Not on your life! Childish voices
sticking up the old man for half a dollar to buy candy?

378

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

No, sir! Not for D. Bonehead Pickering, the amateur
trailing arbutus!"

Subconscious Self may have had an undesirable way
of expressing itself, but there was no denying the
truth of what it said. Its words carried conviction*
Mr. Pickering replaced the ring in his pocket and,
burying his head in his hands, groaned in bitterness
of spirit.

He had lost her. He must face the fact. She had
thrown him over. Never now would she sit at his table,
the brightest jewel of Detroit's glittering social life.
She would have made a stir in Detroit. Now that
city would never know her. Not that he was worry-
ing much about Detroit. He was worrying about him-
self. How could he ever live without her?

This mood of black depression endured for a while,
and then Mr. Pickering suddenly became aware that
Subconscious Self was sneering at him.

"You're a wonder !" said Subconscious Self.

"What do you mean?"

"Why, trying to make yourself think that at the
bottom of your heart you aren't tickled to death that
this has happened. You know perfectly well that
you're tremendously relieved that you haven't got to
marry the girl, after all. You can fool everybody else,
but you can't fool me. You're delighted, man, de-
lighted!"

JCTS

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Tht mere suggestion revolted Mr. Pickering. He
was on the point of indignant denial, when quite
abruptly there came home to him the suspicion that
the statement was not so preposterous after all. It
seemed incredible and indecent that such a thing should
be, but he could not deny, now that it was put to him
point-Wank in this way, that a certain sense of relief
was beginning to mingle itself with his gloom. It was
shocking to realize, but — yes, be actually was feeling
as if he had escaped from something which he had
dreaded. Half an hour ago there had been no sus-
picion of such an emotion among the many which had
occupied his attention, but now he perceived it clearly.
Half an hour ago he had felt like Lucifer hurled from
heaven. Now, though how that train of thought had
started he could not have said, he was distinctly con-
scious of the silver lining. Subconscious Self began
to drive the thing home.

"Be honest with yourself,* it said. "You aren't
often. No man is. Look at the matter absolutely
fairly. You know perfectly well that the mere idea
of marriage has always scared you. You hate making
yourself conspicuous in public. Think what it would
be like, standing up there in front of all the world
and getting married. And then — afterward! Why
on earth do you think that you would have beeA happy
with this girl? What do you know about her except

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money.

that she is a beauty? I grant you she's that, but are
you aware of the infinitesimal part looks play in
married life? My dear chap, better is it for a man
that he marry a sympathetic gargoyle than a Venus
with a streak of hardness in her. You know — and
you would admit it if you were honest with your-
self— that this girl is hard. She's got a chilled-steel
souL

"If you wanted to marry someone — and there's no
earthly reason why you should, for your life's per-
fectly full and happy with your work — this is the last
girl you ought to marry. You're a middle-aged man
You're set. You like life to jog along at a peaceful
walk. This girl wants it to be a fox trot. You've
got habits which you have had for a dozen years. I
ask you, is she the sort of girl to be content to be
a stepmother to a middle-aged man's habits? Of
course if you were really in love with her, if she were
your mate, and all that sort of thing, you would take
a pleasure in making yourself over to suit her require-
ments. But you aren't in love with her. You are sim-
ply caught by her looks. I tell you, you ought to look
on that moment when she gave you back your ring as
the luckiest moment of your life. You ought to make
a sort of anniversary of it. You ought to endow a
hospital or something out of pure gratitude. I don't
know how long you're going to live — if you act like a

*75

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money,

grown-up man instead of a boy and keep out of woods
and shrubberies at night, you may live forever — but
you will never have a greater bit of luck than the one
that happened to you tonight."

Mr. Pickering was convinced. His spirits soared.
Marriage! What was marriage? Slavery, not to be
endured by your man of spirit. Look at all the un-
happy marriages you saw everywhere. Besides, you
had only to recall some of the novels and plays of
recent years to get the right angle on marriage. Ac-
cording to the novelists and playwrights, shrewd fel-
lows who knew what was what, if you talked to your
wife about your business she said you had no soul;
if you didn't she said you didn't think enough of her
to let her share your life. If you gave her expensive
presents and an unlimited credit account she com-
plained that you looked on her as a mere doll; and if
you didn't she called you a tightwad. What was mar-
riage? If it didn't get you with the left jab it landed
on you with the right uppercut. None of that sort
of thing for Dudley Pickering.

"You're absolutely right," he said enthusiastically.
"Funny I never looked at it that way before."

Somebody was turning the door handle. He hoped
it was Roscoe Sherriff. He had been rather dull the
last time Sherriff had looked in. He would be quite
different now. He would be gay and sparkling. He

376

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

remembered two good Ford stories he would like to tell
Sherriff.

The door opened and Claire came in. There was a
silence. She stood looking at him in a way that puz-
zled Mr. Pickering. If it had not been for her attitude
at their last meeting and the manner in which she had
broken that last meeting up, he would have said that
her look seemed somehow to strike a note of appeal.
There was something soft and repentant about her.
She suggested, it seemed to Mr. Pickering, the prodigal
daughter revisiting the old homestead.

"Dudley!"

She smiled a faint smile, a wistful, deprecating
smile. She was looking lovelier than ever. Her face
glowed with a wonderful color and her eyes were very
bright. Mr. Pickering met her gaze, and strange
things began to happen to his mind, that mind which
a moment before had thought so clearly and estab-
lished so definite a point of view.

What a gelatin-backboned thing is man, who prides
himself on his clear reason and becomes as wet blot-
ting-paper at one glance from bright eyes ! A moment
before, Mr. Pickering had thought out the whole sub-
ject of woman and marriage in a few bold flashes of
his capable brain, and thanked Providence that he was
not as those men who take unto themselves wives to
their undoing. Now in an instant he had lost that iron

877

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

outlook. Reason was temporarily out of business. He
was slipping.

"Dudley !»

For a space Subconscious Self thrust itself forward.

"Look out! .Be careful !" it warned.

Mr. Pickering ignored it. He was watching, fasci-
nated, the glow on Claire's face, her shining eyes.

"Dudley, I want to speak to you."

"Tell her you can only be seen by appointment ! Es-
cape! Bolt!"

Mr. Pickering did not bolt. Claire came toward him,
still smiling that pathetic smile. A thrill permeated
Mr. Pickering's entire one hundred and ninety-seven
pounds, trickling down his spine like hot water and
coming out at the soles of his feet. He had forgotten
now that he had ever sneered at marriage. It seemed
to him now that there was nothing in life to be com-
pared with that beatific state, and that bachelors were
mere wild asses of the desert.

Claire came and sat down on the arm of his chair.
He moved convulsively, but he stayed where he was.

"Fool.1" said Subconscious Self.

Claire took hold of his hand and patted it. He quiv-
ered, but remained.

"Ass!" hissed Subconscious Self.

Claire stopped patting his hand and began to stroke
it Mr. Pickering breathed heavily.

278

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money"

"Dudley, dear/' said Claire softly, "I've been an
awful fool, and I'm dreadfully, dreadfully sorry, and
you're going to be the nicest, kindest, sweetest man on
earth and tell me you've forgiven me. Aren't you?"

Mr. Pickering's lips moved silently. Claire kissed
the thinning summit of his head. There was a pause.

"Where is it?" she asked.

Mr. Pickering started.

"Eh?"

"Where is it? Where did you put it? The ring,
silly!"

Mr. Pickering became aware that Subconscious Self
was addressing him. The occasion was tense and Sub-
conscious Self did not mince its words.

"You poor, maudlin, sentimental, doddering chunk
of imbecility," it said; "are there no limits to your
insanity? After all I said to you just now, are you
deliberately going to start the old idiocy all over
again?"

"She's so beautiful," pleaded Mr. Pickering. "Look
at her eyes!"

"Ass! Don't you remember what I said about
beauty?"

"Yes, I know, but »

"She's as hard as nails."

"Pm sure you're wrong."

"Pm not wrong."

«79

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"But she loves me."

"Forget it !"

Claire jogged his shoulders.

"Dudley, dear, what are you sitting there dreaming
for? Where did you put the ring?"

Mr. Pickering fumbled for it, located it, produced it.
Claire examined it fondly.

"Did she throw it at him and nearly break his heart !"
she said.

"Bolt!" urged Subconscious Self. "Fly! Go to
Japan !"

Mr. Pickering did not go to Japan. He was staring
worshipingly at Claire. With rapturous gaze he noted
the gray glory of her eyes, the delicate curve of her
cheek, the grace of her neck. He had no time to
listen to pessimistic warnings from any Gloomy Gus
of a Subconscious Self. He was ashamed that he had
ever even for a moment allowed himself to be per-
suaded that Claire was not all that was perfect. No
more doubts and hesitations for Dudley Pickering. He
was under the influence.

"There!" said Claire, and slipped the ring on her
finger.

She kissed the top of his head once more.

"So there we are !" she said.

"There we are !" gurgled the infatuated Dudley.

"Happy now?"

£80

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Ur-rP*

"Then kiss me."
Mr. Pickering kissed her.

"Dudley, darling," said Claire, "we're going to be
awfully, awfully happy, aren't we?"
"You bet we are!" said Mr. Pickering.
Subconscious Self said nothing, being beyond speech.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

XXI

FOR some minutes after Claire had left him Bill
remained where he was, motionless. He felt
physically incapable of moving. All the strength that
was in him he was using to throw off the insidious
poison of her parting speech, and it became plainer
to him with each succeeding moment that he would
have need of strength.

It is part of the general irony of things that in life's
crises a man's good qualities are often the ones that
help him least, if indeed they do not actually turn
treacherously and fight against him. It was so with
Bill. Modesty, if one may trust to the verdict of the
mass of mankind, is a good quality. It sweetens the
soul and makes for a kindly understanding of one's
fellows. But arrogance would have served Bill better
now. It was his fatal habit of self-depreciation that
was making Claire's words so specious, as he stood
there trying to cast them from his mind. Who was
he, after all, that he should imagine that he had won
on his personal merits a girl like Elizabeth Boyd?

He had never been able to look on himself, after the
manner of many of the men he knew, as a tremendous
fellow, the center of a wondering world, Nature's su-

882

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

preme handiwork. He was conscious — too conscious
— of his shortcomings. From boyhood the sort of man
he had admired was the capable, dashing, quick-witted,
debonaire fellow, the man you could never take with-
out his answer, whether you attacked him with a sword
or with an epigram, and the realization of the gulf
that separated himself from this ideal male had en-
gendered humility, increasing with the years. He had
the not very common type of mind that perceives the
merit in others more readily than their faults and in
himself the faults more readily than the merit. Time
and the society of a great number of men of different
ranks and natures had rid him of the outer symbol
of this type of mind, which is shyness, but it had left
him still unconvinced that he amounted to anything
very much as an individual.

This was the thought that met him every time he
tried to persuade himself that what Claire had said
was ridiculous, the mere parting shaft of an angry
woman. With this thought as an ally her words took
on a plausibility hard to withstand. Plausible ! That
was the devil of it. By no effort could he blind him-
self to the fact that they were that. In the light of
Claire's insinuations what had seemed coincidences
took on a more sinister character. It had seemed to
him an odd and lucky chance that Nutty Boyd should
have come to the rooms which he was occupying that)

888

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

night, seeking a companion. Had it been chance?
Even at the time he had thought it strange that, on
the strength of a single evening spent together, Nutty
should have invited a total stranger to make an in-
definite visit at his home. Had there been design be-
hind the invitation?

Bill began to walk slowly to the house. He felt
tired and unhappy. He meant to go to bed and try
to sleep away these wretched doubts and questionings.
Daylight would bring relief.

As he reached the open front door he caught the
sound of voices, and paused for an instant, almost un-
consciously, to place them. They came from one of
the rooms upstairs. It was Nutty speaking now, and
it was impossible for Bill not to hear what he said,
for Nutty had abandoned his customary drawl in favor
of a high, excited tone.

"Of course you hate him and all that," said Nutty ;
<<but after all you will be getting five million dollars
that ought to have come to "

That was all that Bill heard, for he hail stumbled
across the hall and was in his room, sitting on the
bed and staring into the darkness with burning eyes.
The door banged behind him.

So it was true!

There came a knock at the door. It was repeated.
The handle turned.

£84

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Is that you, Bill?"

It was Elizabeth's voice. He could just see her,
framed in the doorway.

"Bill!"

His throat was dry. Something seemed to be block-
ing it up. He swallowed, and found that he could
speak.

"Yes?"

"Did you just come in?"

"Yes."

The door handle shook. Outside a whippoorwill
had begun its monotonous cry. The sound seemed to
beat on his brain like a hammer.

"Then— you heard?"

"Yes."

There was a long silence. Then the door closed
gently and he heard her go upstairs.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

xxn

¥ X THEN Bill woke next morning it was ten o'clock ;
V V and his first emotion, on a day that was to
be crowded with emotions of various kinds, was one
of shame. The desire to do the fitting thing is in-
nate in man, and it struck Bill, as he hurried through
his toilet, that he must be a shallow, coarse-fibered
sort of person, lacking in the finer feelings, not to have
passed a sleepless night. There was something revolt-
ing in the thought that in circumstances which would
have made sleep an impossibility for most men he had
slept like a log. He did not do himself the justice
to recollect that he had had a singularly strenuous day,
and that it is Nature's business, which she performs
quietly and unromantically, to send sleep to tired men,
regardless of their private feelings; and it was in a
mood of dissatisfaction with the quality of his soul
that he left his room. He had a general feeling thai
he was not much of a chap and that when he died —
which he trusted would be shortly — the world would be
well rid of him. He felt humble and depressed and
hopeless.

Elizabeth met him in the passage. At the age of
eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an

*86

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if
he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later
seventies.

Except for a pallor strange to her face, and a
drawn look about the eyes, there was nothing to show
that all was not for the best with Elizabeth in a best
of all possible worlds. If she did not look jaunty she
at least looked composed. She greeted BQl with a
smile.

"I didn't wake you. I thought I would let you
sleep on."

The words had the effect of lending an additional
clarity and firmness of outline to the picture of him-
self which Bill had already drawn in his mind — of a
soulless creature sunk in hoggish slumber.

"We've had breakfast. Nutty has gone for a walk.
Isn't he wonderful nowadays! I've kept your break*
fast warm for you."

Bill protested. He might be capable of sleep, but
he was not going to sink to food.

"Not for me, thanks," he said hollowly.

"Come along."

"Honestly "

"Come along."

He followed her meekly. How grimly practical
women were! They let nothing interfere with the
essentials of life. It seemed all wrong. Nevertheless,

887

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

he breakfasted well and gratefully, Elizabeth watching
him in silence across the table.

"Finished?"

"Yes, thanks."

She hesitated for a moment.

"Well, Bill, I've slept on it. Things are in rather
a muddle, aren't they! I think I had better begin by
explaining what led up to those words you heard Nutty
say last night. Won't you smoke?"

"No, thanks."

"You'll feel better if you do."

"I couldn't."

A bee had flown in through the open window. She
followed it with her eye as it blundered about the room.
It flew out again into the sunshine. She turned to
Bill again. ^

"They were supposed to be words of consolation,"
she said.

Bill said nothing.

"Nutty, you see, has his own peculiar way of look-
ing at things, and it didn't occur to him that I might
have promised to marry you because I loved you. He
took it for granted that I had done it to save the Boyd
home. He has been very anxious from the first that
I should marry you. I think that that must have been
why he asked you down here. He found out in New
York, you know, who you were. Someone you met at

288

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

supper recognized you, and told Nutty. So, as far
as that is concerned, the girl you were speaking to
at the gate last night was right."

He started.

"You heard her?"

"I couldn't help it. She meant me to hear. She
was raising her voice quite unnecessarily if she did
not mean to include me in the conversation. I had gone
in to find Nutty and he was out, and I was coming
back to you. That's how I was there. You didn't
see me because your back was turned. She saw me."

Bill met her eyes.

"You don't ask who she was?"

"It doesn't matter who she was. It's what she said
that matters. She said that we knew you were Lord
Dawlish."

"Did you know?"

"Nutty told me two or three days ago." Her voice
shook and a flush came into her face. "You probably
won't believe it, but the news made absolutely no differ-
ence to me one way or the other. I had always im-
agined Lord Dawlish as a treacherous, adventurous
sort of man, because I couldn't see how a man who
was not like that could have persuaded Uncle Ira to
leave him his money. But after knowing you even for
this short time, I knew you were quite the opposite of
that, and I remembered that the first thing you had

889

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

done on coming into the money had been to offer me
half, so the information that you were the Lord Daw-
lish whom I had been hating did not affect me. And
the fact that you were rich and I was poor did not
affect me either. I loved you, and that was all I cared
about. If all this had not happened everything would
have been all right. But, you see, nine-tenths of what
that girl said to you was so perfectly true that it is
humanly impossible for you not to believe the other
tenth, which wasn't. And then, to clinch it, you
hear Nutty consoling me. That brings me back to
Nutty"

"Let me tell you about Nutty first. I said that he
had always been anxious that I should marry you.
Something happened last night to increase his anxiety.
I have often wondered how he managed to get enough
money to enable him to spend three days in New York,
and last night he told me. He came in just after I
had got back to the house after leaving you and that
girl, and he was very scared. It seems that when the
letter from the London lawyer came telling him that
he had been left a hundred dollars, he got the idea
of raising money on the strength of it. You know
Nutty by this time, so you won't be surprised at the
way he went about it. He borrowed a hundred dol-
lars from the man at the drugstore on the security

£90

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

of that letter, and then — I suppose it seemed so easy
that it struck him as a pity to let the opportunity slip
— he did the same thing with four other tradesmen.
Nutty*s so odd that I don't know even now whether
it ever occurred to him that he was obtaining money
under false pretenses; but the poor tradesmen hadn't
any doubt about it at all. They compared notes and
found what had happened, and last night, while we
were in the woods, one of them came here and called
Nutty a good many names and threatened him with the
penitentiary.

"You can imagine how delighted Nutty was when
I came in and told him that I was engaged to you.
In his curious way he took it for granted that I had
heard about his financial operations, and was doing it
entirely for his sake, to get him out of his fix. And
while I was trying to put him right on that point he
began to console me. You see, Nutty looks on you as
the enemy of the family, and it didn't strike him that
it was possible that I didn't look on you in that light
too. So, after being delighted for a while, he very
sweetly thought that he ought to cheer me up and
point out some of the compensations of marriage with
you. And — well, that was what you heard. There you
have the full explanation. You can't possibly be-
lieve it."

She broke off and began to drum her fingers on the
291

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

table. And as she did so there came to Bill a sudden
relief from all the doubts and Mack thoughts that had
tortured him. Elizabeth was straight. Whatever ap-
pearances might seem to suggest, nothing could con-
vince him that she was playing an underhand game.
It was as if something evil had gone out of him. He
felt lighter, cleaner. He could breathe.

"I do believe it," he said. "I believe every word
you say."

She shook her head.

aYou can't, in the face of the evidence "

"I believe it."

"No. You may persuade yourself for the moment
that you do, but after a while you will have to go
by the evidence. You won't be able to help your-
self. You haven't realized what a crushing thing
evidence is. You have to go by it against your will.
You see, evidence is the only guide. You don't know
that I am speaking the truth, you just feel it. You're
trusting your heart and not your head. The head
must win in the enid. You might go on believing for
a time, but sooner or later you would be bound to
begin to doubt and worry and torment yourself. You
couldn't fight against the evidence, when once your in-
stinct— or whatever it is that tells you that I am speak-
ing the truth — had begun to weaken. And it would
weaken. Think what it would have to be fighting all

29*

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

the time. Think of the case your intelligence would be
making out, day after day, till it crushed you. It's
impossible that you could keep yourself from docketing
the evidence and arranging it and absorbing it. Think !
Consider what you know are actual facts ! Nutty in-
vites you down here, knowing that you are Lord Daw-
lish. All you know about my attitude toward Lord
Dawlish is what I told you on the first morning of
your visit. I told you I hated him. Yet, knowing
you are Lord Dawlish, I become engaged to you. Di-
rectly afterward you hear Nutty consoling me, as if
I were marrying you against my will. Isn't that an
absolutely fair statement of what has happened? How
could you go on believing me with all that against
you?"

"I know you're straight. You couldn't do anything
crooked."

"The evidence proves that I did."

"I don't care."

"Not now."

"Never."

She shook her head.

"It's dear of you, Bill, but you're promising an im-
possibility. And just because it's impossible, and
because I love you too much to face what would be
bound to happen, Fm going to send you away."

"Send me away !"

£98

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Yes. It's going to hurt. You don't know how
it's going to hurt, Bill ; but it's the only thing to do.
I love you too much to live with you for the rest of
toy life wondering all the time whether you still be-
lieved or whether the weight of the evidence had
crushed out that tiny little spark of intuition which
is all that makes you believe me now. You could never
know the truth for certain, you see — that's the horror
of it ; and sometimes you would be able to make your-
self believe, but more often, in spite of all you could
do, you would doubt. It would poison both our lives.
Little things would happen, insignificant in themselves,
which would become tremendously important just be-
cause they added a little bit more to the doubt which
you would never be able to get rid of.

"When we had quarrels — which we should, as we are
both human — they wouldn't be over and done with in
an hour. They would stick in your mind and rankle,
because, you see, they might be proofs that I didn't
really love you. And then when I seemed happy with
you, you would wonder if I was acting. I know all
this sounds morbid and exaggerated, but it isn't. What
have you got to go on, as regards me? What do
you really know of me? If something like this had
happened after we had been married half a dozen years
and really knew each other, we could laugh at it. But
we are strangers. We came together and loved each

394

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

other because there was something in each of us which
attracted the other. We took that little something
as a foundation and built on it. But what has hap-
pened has knocked away our poor little foundation.
That's all. We don't really know anything at all
about each other for certain. It's just guess-
work."

She broke off and looked at the clock.

"I had better be packing your bag if you're to catch
the train."

He gave a rueful laugh.

"You're throwing me outP'

"Yes, I am. I want you to go while I am strong
enough to let you go."

"If you really feel like that, why in Heaven's name
send me away?"

"How do you know I really feel like that? How
do you know that I am not pretending to feel like
that as part of a carefully prepared plan?"

He made an impatient gesture.

"Yes, I know," she said. "You think I am going
out of my way to manufacture unnecessary complica-
tions. I'm not, I'm simply looking ahead. If I were
trying to trap you for the sake of your money, could
I play a stronger card than by seeming anxious to
give you up? If I were to give in now sooner or later
that suspicion would come to you. You would drive

395

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

it away. You might drive it away a hundred times.
But you couldn't kill it. In the end it would beat
you."

He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"I can't argue,"

"Nor can I. I can only put very badly things which
I know are true. Come and pack."

«T11 do it. Don't you bother."

"Nonsense. No man knows how to pack properly ."

He followed her to his rooms, pulled out his suit*
case, the symbol of the end of all things, watched her
as she flitted about, the sun shining on her fair hair
as she passed and repassed the window. She was pick-
ing things up, folding them, packing them. Bill looked
on with an aching sense of desolation. It was all so
friendly, so intimate, so exactly as it would have been
if she were his wife. It seemed to him needlessly cruel
that she shopld be playing on this note of domesticity
at the moment when she was barring forever the door
between him and happiness. He rebelled helplessly
against the attitude she had taken. He had not thought
it all out, as she had done. It was folly, insanity, ruin-
ing their two lives like this for a scruple.

Once again he was to encounter that practical strain
in the feminine mind which jars upon a man in trouble.
She was holding something in her hand and looking at
it with concern.

£96

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

1 'Why didn't you tell me !' she said. 'Your socks are in

an awful state, you poor boy!' " Z^1^

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Why didn't you tell me!" she said. "Your socks
are in an awful state, poor boy!"

He had the feeling of having been hit by something.
A man has not a woman's gift of being able to trans-
fer his mind at will from sorrow to socks.

"Like sieves !" She sighed. A troubled frown wrin-
kled her forehead. "Men are so helpless! Oh, dear,
Fm sure you don't pay any attention to anything im-
portant. I don't believe you ever bother your head
about keeping warm in winter and not getting your
feet wet. And now I shan't be able to look after you !"

Bill's voice broke. He felt himself trembling.

"Elizabeth."'

She was kneeling on the floor, her head bent over
the suitcase. She looked up and met his eyes.

"It's no use, Bill, dear. I must. It's the only
way."

The sense of the nearness of the end broke down
the numbness which held him.

"Elizabeth! It's so utterly absurd. It's just —
chucking everything away !"

She was silent for a moment.

"Bill, dear, I haven't said anything about it before,
but don't you see that there's my side to be considered
too? I only showed you that you could never pos-
sibly know that I loved you. How am I to know that
you really love me?"

«97

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

He had moved a step toward her. He drew back,
chilled.

"I can't do more than tell you," he said.

"You can't. And there yoji have put in two words
just what I've been trying to make clear all the time.
Don't you see that that's the terrible thing about
life, that nobody can do more than tell anybody any-
thing? Life's nothing but words, words, words, and
how are we to know when words are true? How am
I to know that you didn't ask me to marry you out
of sheer pity and an exaggerated sense of justice?"

He stared at her.

"That," he said, "is absolutely ridiculous P

"Why? Look at it as I should look at it later on,
when whatever it is inside me that tells me it's ridicu-
lous now had died. Just at this moment, while we're
talking here, there's something stronger than reason
which tells me you really do love me. But can't you
understand that that won't last? It's like a candle
burning on a rock with the tide coming up all round
it. It's burning brightly enough now, and we can
see the truth by the light of it. But the tide will put
it out, and then we shall have nothing left to see by.
There's a great black sea of suspicion and doubt creep-
ing up to swamp the little spark of intuition inside us.

"I will tell you what would happen to me if I didn't
send you away. Remember I heard what that girl was

298

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

saying last night. Remember that you hated the
thought of depriving me of Uncle Ira's money so much
that your first act was to try to get me to accept
half of it. The quixotic thing is the first that it occurs
to you to do, because you're like that, because you're
the straightest, whitest man Fve ever known or shall
know. Could anything be more likely, looking at it as
I should later on, than that you should have hit on
the idea of marrying me as the only way of undoing
the wrong you thought you had done me? Fve been
foolish about obligations all my life. I've a sort of
morbid pride that hates the thought of owing anything
to anybody, of getting anything that I have not
earned. By and by, if I were to marry you, a little rot-
ten speck of doubt would begin to eat its way farther
and farther into me. It would be the same with you.
We should react on each other. We should be watch-
ing each other, testing each other, trying each other
out all the time. It would be horrible, horrible !"

He started to speak, then, borne down by the hope-
lessness of it, stopped. Elizabeth stood up. They
did not look at each other. He strapped the suitcase
and picked it up. The end of all things was at hand.

"Better to end it all cleanly, Bill," she said in a
low voice. "It will hurt less."

He did not speak.

Til come down to the gate with you."
*99

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

They walked in silence down the drive* The air
was heavy with the torpor of late summer* The sun
beat down on them, turning her hair to burnished
gold. They reached the gate*

"Good-by, Bill, dear."

He took her hand dully*

"Good-by," he said.

Elizabeth stood at the gate, watching. He swung
down the road with long strides. At the bend he
turned and for a moment stood there, as if waiting
for her to make some sign. Then he fell into his stride
again and was gone. Elizabeth leaned on the gate.
Her face was twisted, and she clutched the warm wood
as if it gave her strength.

The grounds were very empty. The spirit of lone-
liness brooded on them. Elizabeth walked slowly back
to the house. Nutty was coming toward her from the
orchard*

"Hello!" said Nutty.

He was cheerful and debonair* His little eyes were
alight with the glow of contentment. He hummed a
tune.

"Where's Dawlish?" he said.

"He has gone."

Nutty*s tune failed in the middle of a bar. Some-
thing in his sister's voice startled him. The glow of
contentment gave way to a look of alarm*

800

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money.

"Gone? How do you mean — gone? You don't
mean — gone?"

"Yes."

"Gone away?"

"Gone away."

They had reached the house before he spoke again.

"You don't mean — gone away?*

"Yes."

"Do you mean — gone away?"

"Yes."

"You aren't going to marry him?"

"No."

The world stood still. The noise of the crickets
and all the little sounds of summer smote on Nutty's
ear ii one discordant shriek.

"Oh, goshP' he exclaimed faintly, and collapsed cm
the front steps like a boned fish.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

xxm

THE spectacle of Nutty in his anguish did not
touch Elizabeth. Normally a kind-hearted girl,
she was not in the least sorry for him. She had even
taken a bitter pleasure and found a momentary relief
in loosing the thunderbolt which had smitten him down.
Even if it has to manufacture it, misery loves company.
She watched Nutty with a cold and uninterested eye
as he opened his mouth feebly, shut it again and re-
opened it ; and then when it became apparent that these
maneuvers were about to result in speech, she left him
and walked quickly down the drive again. She had
the feeling that if Nutty were to begin to ask her
questions — and he had the aspect of one who is about
to ask a thousand — she would break down. She wanted
solitude and movement, so she left Nutty sitting and
started for the gate. Presently she would go and do
things among the beehives; and after that, if that
brought no solace, she would go in and turn the house
upside down and get dusty and tired. Anything to oc-
cupy herself.

Reaction had set in. She had known it would come,
and had made ready to fight against it, but she had
underestimated the strength of the enemy. It seemed

80S

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money,

to her, in those first minutes, that she had done a mad
thing, that all those arguments which she had usecf
were far fetched and ridiculous. It was useless to tell
herself that she had thought the whole thing out clearly
and had taken the only course that could have been
taken. With Bill's departure the power to face the
situation steadily had left her. All she could think
of was that she loved him and that she had sent him
away.

Why had he listened to her? Why hadn't he taken
her in his arms and told her not to be a little fool?
Why did men ever listen to women? If he had really
loved her would he have gone away? She tormented
herself with this last question for a while. She was
still tormenting herself with it when a melancholy
voice broke in on her meditations.

"I can't believe it," said the voice. She turned, to
perceive Nutty drooping beside her. "I simply can't
believe it!"

Elizabeth clenched her teeth. She was not in the
mood for Nutty.

"It will gradually sink in," she said unsympatheti-
cally.

"Did you really send him away?"

"I did."

"But what on earth for?"

"Because it was the only thing to do."
SOS

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

A light shone on Nutty's darkness.

"Oh, I sa j9 did he hear what I said last night?"

"He did hear what you said last night."

Nutty's mouth opened slowly.

"Oh!"

Elizabeth said nothing.

"But you could have explained that."

"How?"

"Oh, I don't know — somehow or other." He ap-
peared to think. "But you said it was you who sent
him away."

"I did."

"Well, this beats me!"

Elizabeth's strained patience reached its limit.

"Nutty, please!" she said. "Don't let's talk about
it. It's all over now."

"Yes, but "

"Nutty, don't! I can't stand it. I'm raw all oven
I'm hating myself. Please don't make it worse."

Nutty looked at her face, and decided not to make
it worse. But his anguish demanded some outlet. He
found it in soliloquy.

"Just like this for the rest of our lives!" he mur-
mured, taking in the farm grounds and all that in
them stood with one glassy stare of misery. "Noth-
ing but ghastly bees and sweeping floors and carrying
water till we die of old age ! That is, if those blighters

804

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

don't put *ne in the coop for getting that money out
of them. How was I to know that it was obtaining
money under false pretenses? It simply seemed to me
a darned good way of collecting a small roll. I don't
see how Fm ever going to pay them back, so I suppose
it's the cooler for me, all right.'*

Elizabeth had been trying not to listen to him, bat
without success.

"I'll look after that, Nutty. I have a little money
saved up, enough to pay off what you owe. I was
saving it for something else, but never mind."

"Awfully good of you," said Nutty, but his voice
sounded almost disappointed. He was in the frame of
mind which resents alleviation of its gloom. He would
have preferred at that moment to be allowed to round
off the picture of the future which he was construct-
ing in his mind with a reel or two showing himself
doing the lockstep or brooding in a cell. After all,
what difference did it make to a man of spacious
tastes whether he languished for the rest of his life
in a jail or on a farm in the country. Jail, indeed, was
almost preferable. You knew where you where when you
were in jail. They didn't spring things on you. Where-
as life on a farm was nothing but one long succession of
things sprung on you. Now that Lord Dawlish had
gone he supposed that Elizabeth would make him help
her with the bees again. At this thought he groaned

305

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

aloud. When he contemplated a lifetime of Flack's,
a lifetime of bee dodging and carpet beating and water
lugging, and reflected that but for a few innocent
words — words spoken, mark you, in a pute spirit of,
kindliness and brotherly love with the object of putting
a bit of optimistic pep into sister — he might have been
in a position to touch a millionaire brother-in-law
for the needful whenever he felt disposed, the iron en-
tered into Nutty's soul. A rotten, rotten world !

Nutty had the sort of mind that moves in circles.
After contemplating for a time the rottenness of the
world, he came back to the point from which he had
started.

"I can't understand it," he said, "I can't believe
it."

He kicked a small pebble that lay convenient to his
foot.

"You say you sent him away. If he had legged it
on his own account, because what he heard me say got
his goat, I could understand that. But why should
you "

It became evident to Elizabeth that, until some ex-
planation of this point was offered to him, Nutty
would drift about in her vicinity, moaning and shuf-
fling his feet indefinitely.

"I sent him away because I loved him," she said,
"and because, after what had happened, he could never

306

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

be certain that I loved him. Can you understand
that?"

"No," said Nutty frankly, "I'm darned if I can. It
sounds looney to me."

"You can't see that it wouldn't have been fair to
him to marry him?"

"No."

The doubts which she was trying to crush increased
the violence of their attack. It was not that she re-
spected Nutty's judgment in itself. It was that his
view of what she had done chimed in so neatly with
her own. She longed for someone to tell her that she
had done right, someone who would bring back that
feeling of certainty which she had had during her talk
with Bill., And in these circumstances Nutty's atti-
tude had more weight than on its merits it deserved.
She wished she could cry. She had a feeling that if
she once did that the right outlook would come back
to her.

Nutty, meanwhile, had found another pebble and
was kicking it somberly. He was beginning to per-
ceive something of the intricate and unfathomable work-
ings of the feminine mind. He had always looked on
Elizabeth as an ordinary good fellow, a girl whose
mind worked in a more or less understandable way.
She wap not one of those hysterical women you read
about in the works of the highbrow novelists, she

807

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

was just a regular girL And yet now, at the one
moment of her life when everything depended on her
acting sensibly, she had behaved in a way that made
his head swim when he thought of it* What it
amounted to was that you simply couldn't understand
women.

Nobody home! There you had Woman in a nut-
shell.

Into this tangle of silent sorrow came a honking au-
tomobile. It drew up at the gate and a man jumped
out.

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

XXIV

THE man who had alighted from the automobile
was young and cheerful. He wore a flannel suit
of a gay blue and a straw hat with a colored ribbon,
and he looked upon a world, which, his manner seemed
to indicate, had been constructed according to his own
specifications, through a single eyeglass. When he
spoke it became plain that his nationality was Eng-
lish.

Nutty regarded his beaming countenance with a low-
ering hostility. The indecency of anyone's being cheer-
ful at such a time struck him forcibly. He would have
liked mankind to have preserved till further notice
a hushed gloom. He glared at the young man.

Elizabeth, such was her absorption in her thoughts,
was not even aware of his presence till he spoke to her.

"I beg your pardon, is this Flack's ?"

She looked up and met that sunny eyeglass.

"This is Flack's," she said.

"Thank you," said the young man.

The automobile, a stout, silent man at the helm,
throbbed in the nervous way automobiles have when
standing still, suggesting somehow that it were best
to talk quick, as they can give you only a few min-

809

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

utes before dashing on to keep some other appoint-
ment. Either this or a natural volatility lent a breezy
rapidity to the visitor's speech. He looked at Eliza-
beth across the gate, which it had not occurred to
her to open, as if she were just what he had expected
her to be and a delight to his eyes, and burst into
speech*

"My name's Nichols — J. Nichols. I expect you re-
member getting a letter from me a week or two ago?"

The name struck Elizabeth as familiar. But he had
gone on to identify himself before she could place it
in her mind.

"Lawyer, don't you know? Wrote you a letter tell-
ing you that your Uncle Ira Nutcombe had left all his
money to Lord Dawlish."

"Oh, yes," said Elizabeth, and was about to invite
him to pass the barrier when he began to speak again.

"You know, I want to explain that letter. Wrote
it on a sudden impulse, don't you know. The more
I have to do with the law, the more it seems to hit me
that a lawyer oughtn't to act on impulse. At the mo-
ment, you see, it seemed to me the decent thing to
do — put you out of your misery, and so forth — stop
you entertaining hopes never to be realized, what,
and all that sort of thing. You see, it was like this:
Bill — I mean Lord Dawlish — is a great pal of mine,
a dear old chap. You ought to know him. Well,

810

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

being in the know, you understand, through your un-
cle having deposited the will with us, I gave Bill the
tip directly I heard of Mr. Nutcombe's death. I sent
him a telephone message to come to the office, and I
said: 'Bill, old man, this old buster — I beg your par-
don— this old gentleman has left you all his money.'
Quite informal, don't you know. And at the same time,
in the same informal spirit, I wrote you the letter."
He dammed the torrent for a moment. "By the way,
of course you are Miss Elizabeth Boyd, what?"

"Yes."

The young man seemed relieved.

"I'm glad of that," he said. "Funny if you hadn't
been. You'd have wondered what on earth I was talk-
ing about."

In spite of her identity this was precisely what Eliza-
beth was doing. Her mind, still under a cloud, had
been unable to understand one word of Mr. Nichols'
discourse. Judging from his appearance, which was
that of a bewildered hosepipe or a snake whose brain
is being momentarily overtaxed, Nutty was in the same
difficulty. He had joined the group at the gate, aban-
doning the pebble which he had been kicking in the
background, and was now leaning on the top bar, a
picture of silent perplexity.

"You see, the trouble is," resumed the young man,
"my governor, who's the head of the firm, is all for

811

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

doing things according to precedent. He loves red
tape — wears it wrapped round him in winter instead
of flannel, ' He's all for doing things in the proper le-
gal way, which, as I dare say you know, takes months.
And, meanwhile, everybody's wondering what's hap-
pened and who has got the money, and so on and so
forth. I thought I would skip all that and let you
know right away exactly where you stood, so I wrote
you that letter. I don't think my temperament's quite
suited to the law, don't you know, and if he ever hears
that I wrote you that letter I have a notion that the
governor will think so too. So I came over here to
ask you, if you don't mind, not to mention it when you
get in touch with the governor. I frankly admit that
letter, written with the best intentions, was a bloomer."

With which manly admission the young man paused,
and allowed the rays of his eyeglass to play upon Eliza-
beth in silence. Elizabeth tried to piece together what
little she understood of his monologue.

"You mean that you want me not to tell your father
that I got a letter from you?"

"Exactly that. And thanks very much for not say-
ing 'without prejudice,' or anything of that kind.
The governor would have done it."

"But I don't understand. Why should you think
that I should ever mention anything to your father?"

"Might slip out, you know, without your meaning it."
312

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"But when? I shall never meet your father."

"You might quite easily. He might want to see
you about the money,"

"The money ?"

The eyebrow above the eyeglass rose, surprised.

"Haven't you had a letter from the governor ?"

"No."

The young man made a despairing gesture.

"I took it for granted that it had come on the same
boat that I did. There you have the governor's meth-
ods! Couldn't want a better example! I suppose
some legal formality or other has cropped up and laid
him a stymie, and he's waiting to get round it. You
really mean he hasn't written? Why, dash it," said
the young man, as one to whom all is revealed, "then
you can't have understood a word of what Fve been
saying!"

For the first time Elizabeth found herself capable
of smiling. She liked this incoherent young man.

"I haven't," she said.

"You don't know about the will?"

"Only what you told me in your letter."

"Well, I'm hanged ! Tell me— I hadn't the honor of
knowing him personally — was the late Mr. Nutcombe's
whole life as eccentric as his will-making? It seems
tome "

Nutty spoke.

818

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

BBS*

Uneasy Money

"Uncle Ira's middle name," he said, "was Blooming-
dale. That," he proceeded bitterly, "is the frightful
injustice of it all. I had to suffer from it right along,
and all I get, when it comes to a showdown, is a dinky
hundred bones. Uncle Ira insisted on father's and
mother's calling me Nutcombe, which ought to have
brought the Gerry Society down on him ; and whenever
he got a new craze I was always the one he worked
it off on. You remember the time he became a vege-
tarian, Elizabeth? Gosh!" Nutty brooded coldly on
the past. "You remember the time he had it all doped
out that the end of the world was to come at five
in the morning one February? Made me sit up all
night with him, reading Marcus Aurelius! And the
steam heat turned off at twelve-thirty! I could tell
you a dozen things just as bad as that. He always
picked on me. And now I've gone through it all he
leaves me a hundred dollars !"

Mr. Nichols nodded sympathetically.

"I should have imagined that he was rather like that.
You know, of course, why he made that will I wrote
to you about, leaving all his money to Bill Dawlish?
Simply because Bill, who met him golfing at a place in
Cornwall in the off season, cured him of slicing his
approach shots! I give you my word that was the
only reason. Fm sorry for old Bill, poor old chap.
Such a good sort."

314

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"He's all right," said Nutty. "But why you should
be sorry for him gets past me. A fellow who gets
five million "

"But he doesn't, don't you see?"

"How do you mean?"

"Why, this other will puts him out of the running."

"Which other will?"

"Why, the one I'm telling you about."

He looked from one to the other, apparently as-
tonished at their slowness of understanding. Then an
idea occurred to him.

"Why, now that I think of it, I never told you,
did I? Yes, your uncle made another will at the very
last moment, leaving all he possessed to Miss Boyd."

The dead silence in which his words were received
stimulated him to further speech. It occurred to him
that, after that letter of his, perhaps these people
were wary about believing anything he said.

"It's absolutely true. It's the real, stable informa-
tion this time. I had it direct from the governor, who
was there when he made the will. He and the gover-
nor had had a row about something, you know, and
they made it up during those last days, and — well, ap-
parently your uncle thought he had better celebrate
it somehow, so he made a new will. From what little
I know of him that was the way he celebrated most
things. I took it for granted the governor would have

815

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

written to you by this time. I expect you'll hear by
the next mail. You see, what brought me over was the
idea that when he wrote you might possibly take it
into your heads to mention haying heard from me. You
don't know my governor. If he found out I had done
that I should never hear the last of it. So I said to
him: 'Gov'nor, Fm feeling a bit jaded. Been working
too hard, or something. I'll take a week or so off,
if you can spare me/ He didn't object, so I whizzed
over. Well, of course, I'm awfully sorry for old Bill,
but I congratulate you, Miss Boyd."

"What's the time?" said Elizabeth.

Mr. Nichols was surprised. He could not detect
the connection of ideas.

"It's about five to eleven," he said, consulting his
watch.

The next moment he was even more surprised, for
Elizabeth, making nothing of the barrier of the gate,
had rushed past him and was even now climbing into
his automobile.

"Take me to the station," she was crying to the
stout, silent man, whom not even these surprising hap-
penings had shaken from his attitude of well-fed
detachment.

The stout man, ceasing to be silent, became inter-
rogative.

«Uh?"

816

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Take me to the station. I must catch the eleven
o'clock train."

The stout man was not a rapid thinker. He envel-
oped her in a stodgy gaze. It was only too plain to
Elizabeth that he was a man who liked to digest one
idea slowly before going on to absorb the next. Jerry
Nichols. had told him to drive to Flack's. He had
driven to Flack's. Here he was at Flack's. Now this
young woman was telling him to drive to the station.
It was a new idea, and he bent himself to the Fletch-
erizing of it.

"Ill give you ten dollars if you get me there by
eleven," shouted Elizabeth.

The car started as if it were some living thing that
had had a sharp instrument jabbed into it. Once or
twice in his life it had happened to the stout man to
encounter an idea which he could swallow at a gulp.
This was one of them.

Mr. Nichols, following the car with a wondering eye,
found that Nutty was addressing him.

"Is this really true?" said Nutty.

"Absolute gospel."

A wild cry, a piercing whoop of pure joy, broke
the summer stillness.

"Come and have a drink, old man!" babbled Nutty.
"This needs celebrating!" His face fell. "Oh, Lord,
I was forgetting, I'm on the wagon."

817

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"On the wagon ?"

"Sworn off, you know. Fm never going to touch
another drop as long as I live. I began to see things
— monkeys !"

"I had a pal," said Mr. Nichols sympathetically,
"who used to see kangaroos."

Nutty seized him by the arm, hospitable though
handicapped.

"Come and have a bit of bread and butter, or a
slice of cake or something, and a glass of water. I
want to tell you a lot more about Uncle Ira, and I want
to hear all about your end of it. Gee, what a day !"

"The maddest, merriest of all the glad New Year,"
assented Mr. Nichols. "A slice of that old '87 cake.
Just the thing!"

818

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

XXV

BILL made his way along the swaying train to the
smoking car. It had come upon him overwhelm-
ingly that he needed tobacco. He was in the mood
when a man must either smoke or give up altogether
the struggle with Fate. He lit his pipe, and looked
out of the window at Long Island racing past him. It
was only a blur to him.

The smoking car was almost empty. Across the
aisle a warm man, who had the air of having run for
the train, was fanning himself with a newspaper. In
the seat behind him two men had begun an earnest and
wordy discussion of automobiles. An official in uni-
form stood beside a seatful of papers and packages.
Soon, perhaps because he was an unquenchable opti-
mist but more probably because it was his job, he
would patrol the train offering for sale the peanut
brittle and the road maps of Long Island which no-
body ever bought. In the far corner there was some-
thing shapeless which closer inspection would have
revealed as a sleeping Irishman.

The conductor was asking for tickets. Bill showed
his mechanically, and the conductor passed on. Then
he settled down once more to his thoughts. He could

819

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

not think coherently yet. His walk to the station had
been like a walk in a dream. He was conscious of a
great dull pain that weighed on his mind, smothering
it. The trees and houses still moved past him in the
same indistinguishable blur.

He became aware that the conductor was standing
beside him, saying something about a ticket. He pro-
duced his once more, but this did not seem to satisfy
the conductor. To get rid of the man, who was be-
coming a nuisance, he gave him his whole attention,
as far as that smothering weight would allow him to
give his whole attention to anything, and found that
the man was saying strange things. He thought that
he could not have heard him correctly.

"What?" he said.

"Lady back there told me to collect her fare from
you," repeated the conductor. "Said you would pay."

Bill blinked. Either there was some mistake or trou-
ble had turned his brain.

"It's to New York — one seventy-nine."

Bill pushed himself together with a supreme effort.

"A lady said I would pay her fare?"

"Yup."

"But— but why?" demanded Bill feebly.

The conductor seemed unwilling to go into first
causes.

"Search me," he replied. "It's what she said."
320

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

"Pay her fare!"

"Told me to collect it off the gentleman in the gray
suit in the smoking car. You're the only one that's
got a gray suit."

"There's some mistake."

"Not mine."

"What does she look like?"

The conductor delved in his mind for adjectives.

"Small," he said, collecting them slowly. "Fair hair.
Brown eyes "

He desisted from his cataloguing at this point, for
with a loud exclamation that woke the slumbering
Irishman and caused the two automobile experts to lose
temporarily the thread of their remarks, Bill had dashed
from the car. The man with the newspaper sought
information.

"What's the trouble?"

"Search me," said the conductor, a man of a slim
vocabulary.

A solution occurred to him. He offered it.

"Dippy," he suggested, and went to talk about
peanut brittle and road maps to the official in uniform.

Two cars farther back Bill had dropped into the
seat by Elizabeth, and was gurgling wordlessly. A
massive lady, who had entered the train at East
Moriches in company with three children and a cat
m & basket, eyed him with a curiosity that she made

321

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

no attempt to conceal Two girls in a neighboring
seat leaned forward eagerly to hear all. This was
because one of them had told the other that Elisa-
beth was Mary Pickford. Her companion was skep-
tical, but nevertheless obviously impressed*

"My God r said Bfll.

The massive lady told the three children sharply to
look at their picture book*

"Well, I'm damned!"

The mother of three said that if her offspring did
not go right along to the end of the car and look at
the pretty trees trouble must infallibly ensue.

"Elizabeth !"

At the sound of the name the two girls leaned back,
taking no further interest in the proceedings.

"What are you doing here?"

Elizabeth smiled, a shaky but encouraging smile.

"I came after you, Bill."

"You've got no hat!"

"I was in too much of a hurry to get one, and I
gave all my money to the man who drove the car.
That's why I had to ask you to pay my fare. You
see, Fm not too proud to use your money after
all"

"Then *

"Tickets, please. One seventy-nine."

It was the indefatigable conductor, sensible of his
82S

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

'I came after you, Bill/ "

Digitized by VjOOQ IC

Digitized by LiOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

duty to the company and resolved that nothing should
stand in the way of its performance. Bill gave him five
dollars and told him to keep the change. The con-
ductor saw eye to eye with him in this.

"Bill ! You gave him " She gave a little shrug

of her shoulders. 'Well, it's lucky you're going to
marry a rich girl."

A look of the utmost determination overspread Bill's
face*

"I don't know what you're talking about. Fm going
to marry you. Now that I've got you again I'm not
going to let you go. You can use all the arguments
you like, but it won't matter. I was a fool ever to
listen. If you try the same sort of thing again Fm
just going to pick you up and carry you off. Fve been
thinking it over since I left you. My mind has been
working absolutely clearly. I've gone into the whole
thing. It's perfect rot to take the attitude you did.
We know we love each other, and Fm not going to
listen to any talk about time making us doubt it. Time
will only make us love each other all the more."

"Why, Bill, this is eloquence!"

"I feel eloquent."

The stout lady ceased to listen. They had lowered
their voices and she was hard of hearing. She con-
soled herself by taking up her copy of Gingery Stories
and burying herself in the hectic adventures of a young

8*3

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

millionaire and an artist's model. Elizabeth caught
a fleeting glimpse of the cover.

"I bet there's a story in there of a man named
Harold who was too proud to marry a girl, though he
loved her, because she was rich and he wasn't. You
wouldn't be so silly as that, Bill, would you?"

"It's the other way about with me,"

"No, it's not. Bill, do you know a man named
Nichols ?"

"Nichols?"

"J. Nichols. He said he knew you. He said he had
told you about Uncle Ira leaving you his money."

" Jerry Nichols ! How on earth Oh, I remem-
ber. He wrote to you, didn't he?"

"He did. And this morning, just after you had left,
be called."

"Jerry Nichols called?"

"To tell me that Uncle Ira had made another will
before he died, leaving the money to me."

Their eyes met.

"So I stole his car and caught the train," said Eliza-
beth simply.

Bill was recovering slowly from the news.

"But — this makes rather a difference, you know,"
he said.

"In what way?"

"Well, what I mean to say is, you've got five million
8*4

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

dollars and Fve got two thousand a year, don't you
know, and so "

Elizabeth tapped him on the knee.

"Bill, do you see what this is in my hand?"

"Eh? What?"

"It's a pin. And Fm going to dig it right into
you wherever I think it will hurt most unless you stop
being Harold at once. I'll tell you exactly what
you've got to do, and you needn't think you're going
to do anything else. When we get to New York we take
the subway down to Brooklyn Bridge. We then walk
to the City Hall, where you go to the window marked
Marriage Licenses and buy one. It will set you back
one dollar. You will give your correct age and name
and you will hear mine. It will come as a shock to
you to know that my second name is something awful!
I've kept it concealed all my life. After we've done
that we shall go to the only church that anybody could
possibly be married at. It's on Twenty-ninth Street,
just round the corner from Fifth Avenue. It's got
a fountain playing in front of it, and it's a little bit
of Heaven dumped right down in the middle of New
York. And after that — well, we might start looking
about for that farm we've talked of. We can get a
good farm for five million dollars, and leave something
over to be doled out — cautiously — to Nutty. And then
all we have to do is to live happily ever after."

886

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Uneasy Money

Something small and soft slipped itself into his hand,
just as it had done ages and ages ago in Lady Wether-
by's wood.

It stimulated Bill's conscience to one last remon-
strance.

"But, I say, you know "

"Well?"

"This business of the money, you know. What I
mean to say is OwP'

He broke off, as a sharp pain manifested itself in
the fleshy part of his leg. Elizabeth was looking at
him reprovingly, her weapon poised for another on-
slaught.

"I told you!" she said.

"All right, I won't do it again."

"That's a good child. Bill, listen. Come closer and
tell me all sorts of nice things about myself till we
get to Jamaica, and then TO tell you what I think of
you. We've just passed Ifllip, so you've plenty of
time."

<*>

85,1™ 1033

'07 02-013-01 «... J

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

UNIVERSITY Of MICHIGAN

39016066064406

Digitized by LjOOQ IC

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Texts

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Uneasy money"

See other formats